Maugham and his symbolism
...the Antwerp games of 1920. The five rings represent the union of the five continents of the world and the colours were chosen because at least one of the five colours exists in every flag of the world's nations. The Olympic torch, which had been part of the ancient games, was reinstated as part of the opening ceremony in the 1928 games in Amsterdam. The idea of the torch relay (carrying a lit torch from Greece to the next Olympic venue) was introduced in the Berlin games of 1936. The relay included some 3,000 runners who carried the torch from Greece to Germany, crossing a total of seven countries. The relay to Sydney was far more complex and involved keeping the flame alight 30,000 feet above the earth on a specially chartered transcontinental flight as well as on a short swim underwater. The Berlin games also saw the first live television transmission of the event and during the next 30 years of the Olympics there was an enormous growth in its popularity with a steady increase both in the number of sports included and the number of countries participating. The 1990's also saw the massive commercialization of the Olympics. In 1992, during the opening ceremony of the Barcelona games, Freddie Mercury and Monserrat Caballe sang an Olympic anthem which topped the charts in many countries. The Atlanta games in 1996 had an estimated TV audience of 2.3 billion people a day and in 1995 NBC paid 1.2 billion dollars to televise the Olympic Games in Sydney. Many claim that the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney were the most successful ever. Attendances reached record levels, with the numbers of spectators at some athletics events often exceeding 100,000. The process of choosing th...