1968 Summer Olympics torch relay the National Olympic Committee (NOC) for the host nation provided all the torch-bearers, but for this event each country through which the torch passed was allowed to select their own representatives. The route was designed to replicate that taken by Christopher Columbus in his first visit to the New World. Three locations were seen as key to the route: The flame was lit in Olympia and then taken to Athens where a ceremony greeted it on 24 August 1968. From there runners carried the torch to the port of Piraeus and it was taken aboard the Greek destroyer HNS "Navarino".
1956 Olympic Flame hoax 1956 Olympic Flame hoax The 1956 Olympic Flame hoax was a hoax during the 1956 Summer Olympics, in which Barry Larkin, a veterinary student from Melbourne, pretended to be running with the Olympic Flame. Larkin and eight other students at St John's College, University of Sydney planned to protest against the Olympic Flame torch relay. One reason for the protest was that the torch relay was invented by the Nazis at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Their plan was for one student, dressed in white shorts and a white top, to carry a fake torch. The fake torch