Olympic Games in the opening ceremony. Though the flame has been an Olympic symbol since 1928, the torch relay was only introduced at the 1936 Summer Games to promote the Third Reich. The Olympic mascot, an animal or human figure representing the cultural heritage of the host country, was introduced in 1968. It has played an important part of the Games' identity promotion since the 1980 Summer Olympics, when the Russian bear cub Misha reached international stardom. The mascot of the Summer Olympics in London was named Wenlock after the town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire. Much Wenlock still hosts the Wenlock
LGBT athletes in the Olympic and Paralympic Games the 2010s, Olympic organizers have often included a Pride House facility for LGBT athletes. Alongside the Olympics, international multi-sport events have also been organized specifically for LGBT athletes, including the Gay Games and World OutGames. Since 2014 the International Olympic Committee has listed sexual orientation as a protected category in the Olympic charter. In the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, only 14 athletes out of the 10,708 participants were openly gay, lesbian or bisexual, including: Of them only two, including Matthew Mitcham (who also won a gold medal, making him the first openly gay Olympic champion), were male. Mitcham gained