The XXIV Winter Olympics will open in Beijing on February 4, 2022. The Sports Department of China News Network launched a series of columns "100 Questions about the Winter Olympics", which aims to popularize the knowledge of the Winter Olympics, answer hot questions, and talk about ice and snow anecdotes, so as to help everyone have a better viewing experience during the Beijing Winter Olympics.
No. 70 Winter Olympics | Is the Winter Olympics always taken from Greece?
It is now common practice to collect tinder in Greece before the opening of each Olympic Games. But in the history of the Winter Olympics, the first tinder collection site was Norway.
In 1924, Chamonix, France, hosted the first Winter Olympics in history. However, in the first five Winter Olympic Games, no torch has ever appeared. It was not until the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo that the Olympic flame was officially burned at the main stadium.
Unlike the current Winter Olympics, the flames of the Oslo Winter Olympics did not originate in Greece, but were collected from a stone house where nordheim, the founder of the Norwegian ice and snow sport, lived before his death, and was collected by drilling wood for fire. This is very different from the winter Olympic fire collection ceremony that people are familiar with now.
Since then, it has become a common practice to collect The Flame of the Winter Olympics in the host country. It was not until the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck that the location of tinder collection was moved to Greece, just like the Summer Olympics. After this Winter Olympics, the tinder-gathering ceremony was carried out in Greece.
The fire collection of the Beijing Winter Olympics is no exception. On October 18 last year, the Beijing Winter Olympics were successfully collected from the ancient Olympia site in the Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece.
On October 20th, the welcome ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games was held at the Olympic Tower. Image source: Visual China
Subsequently, the Beijing Winter Olympics torch was handed over by the Hellenic Committee to the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee at the Panathinako Stadium in Athens, the capital of Greece. In the early morning of October 20, Beijing time, the Beijing Winter Olympics tinder arrived in Beijing.
According to the plan, from February 2 to 4, 2022, the traditional torch relay activity will be carried out, and the Beijing Winter Olympic torch will be passed in beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou, with a total of about 1200 torchbearers. The transmission route is based on ice and snow culture, history and culture, and Great Wall culture, presenting the natural scenery, cultural characteristics and urban scenery along the way. (Wang Hao)