In which year did the Olympic Games introduce the torch relay? 1936. The first Olympic torch relay carried the flame from Olympia, Greece, to Berlin for the 1936 Summer Olympics.
The relay began on July 20, 1936, and reached Berlin for the opening ceremony on August 1. About 3,331 runners carried the flame roughly 3,187 kilometres through Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Germany. German sports organiser Carl Diem is generally credited with developing the concept.
People often confuse the relay with the Olympic flame itself. A symbolic flame had already burned at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and again at Los Angeles in 1932, but those flames were lit at the stadium. The 1936 Games introduced the relay journey from ancient Olympia to the host city.
The tradition continued after World War II and became a familiar part of Olympic ceremonies. Its origin is also politically charged: Nazi Germany used the relay to promote an imagined cultural link between ancient Greece and the Third Reich. Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl documented it for the film Olympia.