Olympic Flame Visits IOA

With Hope in our Hearts and Wings on our Heels Olympic Flame lights new chapter for Academy

By Philip Barker at the International Olympic Academy

The moment when double Olympic luge gold medallist Armin Zöggeler carried the Flame for Milano Cortina into the grounds of the International Olympic Academy (IOA) was emotional and moving.

It was also another great moment in the history of an institution which once even had its own International Olympic Committee member.

Although the IOA stands only a few metres away from the place where the Flame is lit, it had never before been part of the Torch Relay (OTR) even though the IOA’s two principle founders Ioannis Ketseas and Carl Diem were both also key figures in establishing the relay of Flame as a major symbol of Olympism.

Zöggeler received the Flame from the first two bearers Petros Gadzakis and Stefania Belmondo a few metres away at the Coubertin Grove close to the memorial stele to Pierre de Coubertin. He  entered the IOA by running up the special steps which carry the message of the Olympic values.

It was the first time he had ever visited Olympia.

“This was a very good experience for me, it was my first time carrying the torch, when you are an athlete you have no idea of coming here, you are more focussed for the athletic aspect for me on my discipline,” Zöggeler said.

It is not just important for me, it’s a very great day for the Italian people,” Zöggeler said.

As he ran, he was welcomed by high school pupils from Italy holding the flags of all the Olympic nations,

He passed the Flame to gymnast Dimosthenes Tampakos, appropriately a gold medallist in the rings at the 2004 Athens Games. Tampakos had last carried the Winter Torch in 2017 when he lit the cauldron in front of the Parthenon.

They carried the Flame accompanied by the soundtrack of the famous opening theme by Vangelis for Chariots of Fire, the classic Oscar winning film set at the 1924 Olympics , the  last  of Coubertin’s time as International Olympic Committee President.

Almost a century ago, Coubertin himself visited Olympia for the unveiling of a monument to the Olympics.

“I believe that a centre of Olympic studies would aid the preservation and progress of my work more than anything else and would keep it from the false paths which I fear,” he wrote a few years later.

He found that Diem and Ketseas were willing allies.

Diem established an Olympic Institute in Berlin before the Second World War.

Ketseas, a Greek sporting official and IOC member delivered a report on establishing an academy to his IOC colleagues in 1949, curiously at the same session in Rome where Cortina was chosen to host the 1956 Winter Olympics.

In 1961, the first session of the IOA was held in Olympia with Ketseas and Diem leading the way.

The IOA has always enjoyed a special place in the Olympic movement and in the 1960s, it even had its own IOC member.

In a modification to the Olympic Charter made in 1966, a new clause was added to rule 10.

This stated that “the President of the International Olympic Academy may be elected for the duration of his presidency.”

At the IOC Session held at the Hotel Excelsior in Rome, Brundage himself proposed the election of Prince Georg Wilhelm of Hanover who had just succeeded Ketseas at the helm of the IOA.

A day later Brundage read a telegram from the Prince “communicating his thanks for his election in connection with his presidency of the IOA.”

As he took office, the Prince had said, “I hope that the IOA will one day be the bridge between the IOC, the National Olympic Committees and the International Federations. I am convinced that such an institution can only do fertile work in close co-operation.

“Not being Greek, I think I may say something that my Greek friends would never express, the realisation of the International Olympic Academy is a generous gift of Greece to the world.”

It was little surprise that the Prince was attracted to the IOA. He had been inspired by the work of educationalist Kurt Hahn who founded Salem School and  Gordonstoun, both institutions which set great store by activities in the open air and self-reliance. The Prince became Salem’s headmaster and in his early years as IOA President, participants lived in tents during the session.

Brundage was delighted with the appointment and told his fellow Executive Board members that the IOA was “the Mecca of the Olympic movement, an excellent way of publicising the Olympic Movement among youth,” and insisted: “The idea is still of great importance for the Olympic movement, endeavours to create a real International Olympic Academy should be stimulated, the more so as now we have an ex-officio member of the IOC who is President of the International Olympic Academy.”

An IOC Commission for the Academy was established, but the 1967 military coup disrupted the harmony of the relationship.

Prince George was German and the military regime insisted that the IOA President should be Greek.

Minister for Sport Lieutenant-Colonel Konstantinos Aslanidis insisted it would be “damaging for Greece” if the Prince remained in office and that the Olympic spirit would disappear.”

In 1971, the IOC minutes for the session in Luxembourg. noted that: “The resignation had been received of Prince George of Hanover.”

The late Norbert Muller, a distinguished professor of Olympic history, insisted: “Prince George was brilliant in preserving the modern Olympic spirit and the ideas behind it.”

Never again would a non-Greek serve in the role and never again would the IOA President automatically have a place on the IOC.

Even so, the next IOA President  Epameinondas Petralias was an IOC member.  Professor Nikolaos Nissiotis was also an IOC member by the time he became President, and Nikos Filaretos later trod the same path as the IOC Commission was extended to include all Olympic education and culture.

When Juan Antonio Samaranch became IOC President, he was a regular visitor to the IOA and encouraged members of the Athletes Commission to do so.

Among them was Thomas Bach who gave a presentation to the IOA on the role of the commission in 1982.

“This Olympic Academy is a link to our roots and heritage.”

In 1996, the IOC Executive Board made what was described as a “pilgrimage” to Olympia during the celebrations for the Centenary of the first Games of the Modern Era in Athens. There they met officials from the municipality of Olympia to discuss education.

In 2021, Bach cut the ribbon when a $12.5 million renovation of the facilities funded by the IOC was completed.

Earlier this year, a full IOC Session was formally opened on the IOA grounds. Although Coventry had won the first of her gold medals at Athens 2004, she had never before visited Olympia. Shortly before the Relay began, Coventry was given a tour of the IOA by HOC President Isidoros Kouvelos, IOA President Dr Charilaos Tsolakis, and Dean and ISOH Vice President Kostas Georgiadis. One of the accommodation rooms was named in Coventry’s honour.

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