Flame lights up towns on momentous day

John Dickens and Richard Cutcher • Published 10 Jul 2012 15:50 2 Comments

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THOUSANDS of patriotic residents lined the streets to cheer on the Olympic Torch as it lit up the region today.

Onlookers enthusiastically waved Union flags as Olympic fever swept over the region.

The Torch started in Maidenhead at 10.49am before reaching Dorney Eton Lake, at 11.40am, when the Flame was rowed down the Olympic venue.

It was then whizzed off to start its journey from Lake End Road in Taplow where large crowds turned out to welcome the relay party.

Pam Worth, Burnham, said: "The atmosphere is electric - it's great we have the opportunity to see the Torch."

The procession then made its way down Bath Road, through Cippenham, where the main attraction with celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal.

He said: "It was an absolutely amazing experience. The energy, the emotion - it was just fantastic!"

The Torch then turned into Chalvey, by Windsor Road, where the carnival atmosphere was ramped up with hundreds of cheering school children.

Alison Oxley, from Herschel Grammar School, said: "We have all 700 of our children here. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity and they will remember this for the rest of their lives."

Torchbearers stopped off for lunch at Slough and Eton College, in Ragstone Road, before it headed to Windsor.

Iconic Columbian footballer Carlos Valderrama, best known for his curly, golden afro, carried the Flame down Arthur Road into Charles Street.

"The day has been indescribable. I've been very excited and it is an honour to carry the Torch through Windsor. I'm very proud to be here."

Kate McIntyre and her children, Jonah, six, and Gabriel, five, from Trinity St Stephen School were on the spot at the junction with Vansittart Road when the Flame made its first appearance in the town.

Jonah said: "The Torch is special because it lights up the Olympics and I am really pleased our school let us out early so I could see it."

It then made its way up Peascod Street into Castle Hill and through Henry VIII Gate into Windsor Castle.

The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh watched on as the Torch was passed through St George's Chapel before it entered The Long Walk - lined by around 10,000 people.

After reaching the top of The Long Walk the Torch made its way to Egham.

This article appeared in Slough Observer 10 Jul 12

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TERRYC
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Jul 10, 16:44
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I was out on the Bath Road near the (B&Q) retail park where hundreds gathered to watch the 'once in a lifetime' procession on both sides of the road. The anticipation and excitement mounted as the procession came into view. The police escort, coaches and sponsors wagons passed but where was the torch bearer ? What had happened ? Why such a big gap ? It was a few minutes before he suddenly appeared without escort or preamble and before many of us had realised and actually got into a reasonable position to take photographs or video, he was passed and gone ! The reason ? The police had failed to close both sides of the road as most of us had expected and our views and access were blocked by a continuous westward flow of traffic preventing us from experiencing the moment properly. Logistically, that may have been an issue but myself and my colleagues went back to work feeling, like the torch in some locations, more than a little put out.

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Jul 10, 18:14
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JUDGE1066
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Jul 12, 18:22
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Look at it as keeping the moderator in a job, trying to get another one with their unbiased views and their ability to embrace free speech things could get ricky if the advertising dries up, sleepwalkers tend to get their just deserts.

Just Saying for all the flag waving people who say.......once in a lifetime experience, learn some history :-)

FACT!

The Olympic flame, lit last week in Greece, arrives in Great Britain tomorrow before embarking on a 70-day, 8,000-mile relay around the British Isles that will culminate in the lighting of the Olympic cauldron in London on July 27. While the Olympic torch relay evokes the spirit of ancient Greece, it was first concocted by a regime not known for the Olympic ideals of international peace and goodwill: Nazi Germany.

While the pageantry appeared to reprise a sacred ancient Greek tradition, the Olympic torch relay was actually a piece of modern political theater carefully scripted and paid for entirely by Nazi Germany. The Greeks employed a ritual fire in the ancient Olympics, but they never staged a relay of torchbearers to open their games. The Olympic torch relay was the brainchild of Carl Diem, the chief organizer of the Berlin Games, who envisioned an unprecedented succession of more than 3,000 runners transporting the flame from the cradle of the ancient Olympics to Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, where it would light the cauldron during the opening ceremonies of the XI Olympiad.

Diem had been instrumental in getting the International Olympic Committee to award the Summer Games to Berlin in 1931, but their future was very much in doubt when Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933. Hitler was contemptuous of the modern Olympic movement, which he once dismissed as “an invention of Jews and Freemasons,” but propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels convinced the Führer that the Summer Games would be an international stage for showcasing Nazi Germany—and the torch relay would be its stirring opening act. Hitler admired the ancient Greeks and saw the Nazis as their rightful heirs. While Diem was not a member of the Nazi Party, his torch relay would be coopted by the Nazis as a powerful propaganda tool to bind not only the ancient and modern Olympics, but ancient Greece and the Third Reich as well.

The entire torch relay, starting with the ceremony in Olympia, was a thoroughly German production. Krupp, a German arms manufacturer, crafted the steel-clad torches that featured a magnesium-burning element designed by German chemists to stay lit regardless of weather conditions. Germany’s Zeiss Optics built the mirror used to light the flame, and an Opel car carrying a spare Olympic flame trailed the torchbearers. Goebbels ensured there was extensive German media coverage of the relay, including radio reports directly from the route, and he commissioned director Leni Riefenstahl to film it as part of “Olympia,” the Nazi propaganda film released in 1938.

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