1988 Winter Olympics torch relay Canadian winters. It was modeled after the Calgary Tower, constructed entirely of Canadian materials and designed to be light enough for the relay runners to carry comfortably. The Calgary Tower itself was retrofitted to install a cauldron at its peak and was lit for the duration of the Games, one of several "replica cauldrons" constructed at Olympic venues throughout Calgary and Canmore. 1988 Winter Olympics torch relay The 1988 Olympic torch relay began on November 15, 1987, when the torch was lit at Olympia and Greek runner Stellos Bisbas began what was called "the longest torch run in history". The
Carl Diem for an Olympic conference in 1934, Diem and Lewald imagined a new symbolic pageant that would cloak the German games with the ancient Greek mantle: the transit of a lit Olympic flame from Greece to Berlin by a relay of torch-bearing runners. While the relay is sometimes believed to be an ancient tradition, it was in fact the wholly modern creation of Lewald and Diem; the ancient games included a ritual flame commemorating the theft of fire from the gods by Prometheus, but not a torch relay. Diem had been organizing long distance road relays ever since 1910. On June