If the Flame Could Talk

            If the Stanley Cup could talk, fans would know the X-rated antics of their favorite champions. If the Olympic Flame could talk, countless questions throughout history could be answered.

            Fortunately, thanks to the internet, that opportunity is finally among us. The Olympic Flame has taken time out of its trip across the United Kingdom to do an exclusive Facebook chat interview. To keep the interview from turning into an ancient history lecture, we only tackled the time line from 1928 until today.        

Now without further delay, here is my exclusive interview with the Olympic Flame.

Sports on the Side: Mr. Flame, thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. I know that you have a packed schedule, and I appreciate the time.

Olympic Flame: Thanks for having me.

            SOTS: So, let us get right to it. Every one of your journeys has begun inOlympia, Greece where the Temple of Hera used to stand…..

            OF: Wait, you mean I didn’t get sparked outside of the local Chipolte outside of her majesty’s castle?  I think my whole life has just been turned upside-down.

            SOTS: My apologies. You obviously know that you make a journey throughGreece before every Olympics. What is that trip like?

             OF: Long for one thing. I get passed around from random person to random person like your freaking stocks.

 I don’t know any of these people. These runners always take the most obscure routes to get from Olympia to Athens. I always tell them when they are going from Gastouni to Lechaina; you want to go south towards Anapafseos first. But no, these guys have to make sure that everybody and their grandmother sees them running through town with me.

Eight days in Greece alone is too freaking long. Your NBA trophy flies first class and gets its own seat for Hera’s sake. I want that kind of treatment. I’ve been around for 49 years longer modern time here. Yet that hunk of metal gets an in flight movie every time it moves.

SOTS: Well, at least with the runners you don’t have to worry about being stuck on a plane watching Battleship for hours on end.

OF: What is that?

SOTS: It’s this disgrace of a movie with Rihanna as a….

OF: Say no more. I concede that point. I just wish that I got better treatment.

Sure it’s nice to see Greece. But I’m fire, I don’t need the exercise.

SOTS: The first time that the modern day relay system was utilized was during the 1936 games in Berlin.

OF: Yeah. Those b*&^%$#s really knew how to keep things moving. It only took 12 days and 11 nights to get me from Greece to Berlin. I traveled 3,187 kilometers and was carried by over 3,000 people. I didn’t mind the pace of the travel, what I got mad at was that that Hitler tool reduced me to part of his propaganda machine.

SOTS: I take it that you were not a big fan of the film Olympia?

OF: No I was not a fan of the film. I think Hitler used the games toillustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of his twisted Reich.  There are so many freaking pictures of me with the pictures of swastikas in the background. I mean, the rest of the world was there with those stickers in the background. HELLOOO, YOU SEE THESE FLAGS HERE!? Did people just miss that or did they just not give two schizers? It made me look like I supported what they did. I’m the symbol of global unity for Poseidon’s sake. But the rest of the world just freaking let those guys just bro-out until it was too late. I don’t know how you humans have survived for this long.

SOTS: Okay, so next question. What is the single weirdest thing that happened to you since 1928? Torch run or ceremony wise?

OF: That’s an easy one. This one gets me every time. The guy who completely duped everyone in 1956. The Melbourne Games, I think, yeah, inAustralia.

SOTS: Barry Larkin?

OF: Yeah, him! Oh my Hermes. I still don’t have any idea how that happened. That was like waking up in a dumpster after a drunken night in Prague. You guys are really stupid for that one.

SOTS: I don’t know how that happened either. You would think that getting a fake torch to the mayor of Sydney would be a plot sure to fail. But it worked.

OF: Oh I remember that so well. These kids were planning on protesting the relay because the relay was an idea created by Nazis. The plan was pretty much get some kid in a white shirt to carry a fake torch and give it to the mayor of Sydney.

SOTS: How exactly did they manage that?

OF: That’s the best part! They got the moron carrying me at the time…

SOTS: Harry Dillon.

OF: Yeah, that moron. Anyway, Larkin and his buddies come running up with the fake torch. I can hear the people laughing at them. Then all of a sudden, one of the kids is waving his arms around and a pair of underwear flies out of the fake torch. The fake runner dashes off and this Larkin kid picks up the fake torch and starts running the rest of the route PROTECTED BY THE SECURITY WHO THOUGHT THAT HE WAS CARRYING ME. Anyway, Larkin gets to Sydney town hall and presents the torch to the mayor. The mayor, then proceeds to read his big speech and Larkin sneaks off. By the time somebody told the mayor it was a hoax, Larkin was gone!

Everyone was sooooooo pissed when they found out that torch wasn’t me. The crowd started to get unruly and Dillon and I needed an army truck to get to the mayor. I was laughing my embers off the whole time. What ever happened to him anyway?

SOTS: Larkin went on to become a successful veterinary surgeon. Never faced any jail time or anything for it.

OF: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! So you guys are so stupid that you got fooled by a fake torch, and then didn’t even arrest the guy who punked you? Oh that’s rich.

SOTS: I suppose so. Anyway, there have been plenty of ways that you have been transferred into the Olympic Cauldron. What is the most memorable way that you went from torch to cauldron?

OF: I have to go with the 1992 Barcelona Games. There was a guy named Antonio Rebollo. He was a Paralympic archer who lit me on the end of an arrow and shot me into the cauldron. I shot up like a volcano and boasted to the crowd. That was the one moment in which I felt all powerful.

SOTS: Umm, you know that’s not what happened right?

OF: What do you mean? Of course that’s what happened. I got put on an arrow and shot into the…

SOTS: Rebollo deliberately overshot the cauldron. The arrow that you were on did not light the natural gas that was coming rising from the cauldron. A technician from Reyes Abades lit the cauldron via remote….

OF: LA LA LA LA LA LA. I can’t hear you. LA LA LA LA. You’re just jealous because that method was too epic for human understanding. LA LA LA LA.

SOTS: Yes, I suppose you are right. Let us move on. What was the most memorable lighting ceremony you were a part of?

OF: Oddly enough, it was in 1996. Muhammad Ali was the guy who placed me to the cauldron in Atlanta that summer.

SOTS: Why is that?

OF: Even though he was shaking the entire time I barely moved. Even when everyone could see the brutal effects of Parkinson’s disease right before their eyes, he didn’t drop me. Even when Bob Costas was patronizing the ever living crap out of the poor man on NBC in front of millions of people, he held me firm. That is an effort that I will never forget for as long as I burn.

  

SOTS: Last one before you go. And really, thank you very much for the interview. What do you expect out of these Olympics in London tonight?

OF: The same thing that I see every Olympics. You guys all across the world gather around me and compete against each other. Even though it is blatantly obvious you guys pretend to care about most of these games once every four years. This year, South Africa will celebrate a certain runner who has no chance of winning, yet he shall compete anyway.  Enemies put their conflicts on hold, for the most part, and shake hands when I’m lit. I represent the ideal that we all want: that one day, every country in the world can forget about oil, war, and religious tensions and learn to live together in harmony. And that hope will never extinguish no matter what, or who, tries to put me out.