It does go out. Torches gutter in crosswinds, rain drowns burners, and relay torches have failed on live television more often than any organizing committee would like. What never goes out is the flame itself, which is a different thing from the torch.
One Fire, Many Torches
Months before each Games, the flame is kindled at Olympia, Greece, in the ruins of the Temple of Hera. An actress playing a high priestess holds a torch at the focal point of a parabolic mirror until concentrated sunlight ignites it. No match or lighter is used. If clouds spoil the ceremony, organizers fall back on a flame lit the same way at rehearsal.
Every flame downstream comes from that fire. Each torchbearer's torch is lit from the previous one. The torch in a runner's hand is one of thousands manufactured for the relay. The flame is what gets passed along.
The Lanterns Nobody Watches
At the lighting ceremony, officials also light several miners' safety lamps from the new flame. These lanterns, descendants of the lamps that kept open flames from igniting gas underground, hold the fire behind glass and mesh. They ride in the escort vehicles the whole way. When the flame crosses an ocean, it flies as a lantern, secured and attended, since nobody can run a torch across the Pacific.
When a torch dies on the road, a handler relights it from a lantern, never from a match or a pocket lighter. The only legitimate source of Olympic fire is Olympic fire. Light it any other way and you no longer have the flame from Olympia, just fire.
Montreal, 1976: The Lighter Incident
The rule got its most famous test a few days after the Montreal Games opened. A rainstorm doused the cauldron. An official relit it with his cigarette lighter, which seems sensible until you know what the flame is supposed to be. Organizers put out his fire and relit the cauldron from a backup of the original flame.
Any lighter can make a cauldron burn. What the organizers were protecting was provenance: an unbroken line of custody running back to a mirror and the Greek sun.
Engineering a Fire That Travels
Modern torches burn propane, butane or a blend, fed from a pressurized canister through a burner built to handle wind, rain, cold and altitude. Many use a double-flame layout: a small, hot pilot flame sits shielded inside the body, ready to relight the tall, bright flame the crowd sees whenever a gust knocks it down.
Torch designs are tested against wind and weather before a single leg is run, and they still fail. During the relay before the Sochi Games in 2014, one of the longest ever staged, torches went out again and again, and the handlers jogging alongside with lanterns relit them each time. The relay was never designed around a torch that cannot die. It was designed so the flame can always be brought back.
The Chain Is the Point
When a torchbearer passes you on the sidewalk, the fire above their head is, by unbroken custody, the same fire kindled at Olympia months earlier. Thousands of people across months and continents take turns keeping one small light going. It is the oldest story we tell about fire, acted out on ordinary streets.
In 2028 that chain will stretch across all 50 states for the first time, and I am campaigning to carry it for one stretch here in Santa Monica. If you'd back me, add your name here.
