2016 Summer Olympics torch relay brought the Olympic torch into the stadium, relayed off the Olympic flame to Hortência Marcari, who relayed to Vanderlei de Lima. de Lima then lit the Olympic cauldron. Notable torch bearers include: 2016 Summer Olympics torch relay The 2016 Summer Olympics torch relay which ran from April 21 until August 5, 2016. After being lit in Olympia, Greece, the torch traveled to Athens on the 27th of April. The Brazilian leg began in the capital, Brasília, and ended in Rio de Janeiro's Maracanã Stadium, the main venue of the 2016 Olympics. After having visited more than 300 Brazilian cities, including
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