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“Whether we live in a rich or disadvantaged country, the flame will unite us all.” Those were the words of International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge on March 25, during the ceremony that saw the Olympic flame ignited in ancient Olympia. Most Greeks were listening or watching intently, as all major television channels interrupted their normal programming to carry the midday event live. The dignitaries present included President Kônstantinos Stefanopoulos and the newly elected prime minister, Kôstas Karamanlês. But was the rest of the world paying attention?

There was a record crowd in attendance at ancient Olympia for the flame-lighting ceremony that signaled the countdown to this summer’s Athens Olympiad. According to some reports, there were 20,000 people, and there was such a great rush to get a good vantage-point that many chose to ignore a police security checkpoint on a bridge leading to the ancient site and instead picked their way down the riverbed and across the stream running under the bridge.

Following Rogge’s speech, the head of the Athens 2004 organizing committee, Gianna Angelopoulou (poised and elegantly dressed, according to Greek press reports) took the podium. She addressed the crowd in Greek, French, and English, trumping Rogge’s effort to close his remarks with a couple of phrases in passable Greek. “Today the Olympic flame will be reborn yet again to enfold the whole world in its light,” Angelopoulou said, referring to the organizer’s plan to hold the first-ever world tour of the flame. In keeping with their role as custodians of ancient Olympic traditions, the Greek hosts of this summer’s Olympics decided that the torch relay, which began after the torch was lit from the Olympic flame, would not be limited to the short distance from ancient Olympia to the games’ host-city, Athens. Instead, the relay would circle the globe, carrying a message of international peace modeled on the ekechereia, the truce established during the ancient Olympic Games.

For the first time since it was introduced in 1936, the torch relay will bring the Olympic flame to all five continents represented by the Olympic rings, on a 78-day world tour. The first stage, already completed, involved a seven-day trip throughout the Peloponnese and then to Athens, where the flame now burns at the Panathenaic Stadium. On June 4, it will embark on its global voyage, with Sydney as its initial destination. The flame will make its first trips to South America and Africa. Its route will include all nine cities bidding for the 2012 Olympics: London, Paris, Madrid, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Havana, Moscow, Istanbul, and Leipzig. And it will cross the United States between June 16-19, stopping at the three cities that have held Olympic Games (Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Atlanta) before arriving in New York.

According to its mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, when the Olympic torch arrives in New York, the city “will join the world in honoring the spirit and the unifying principles of the Olympic Games.” As the mayor of a city hoping to be awarded the 2012 summer Olympiad, Bloomberg will ensure that New York receives the flame with pomp and circumstance. It’s important that the IOC sees enthusiasm over the Olympics among New Yorkers.

But the point of the global itinerary is different, for it seeks to elicit more than a passing interest in the torch relay. Its goal is to alert the world to the opportunity to come together in a spirit of friendship and cooperation this summer in Athens. This idea might sound like something out of a Public Relations 101 textbook, but this doesn’t mean that it lacks substance. The Olympic spirit of peace and friendship may be just an idea, but it is one that the world cannot afford to ignore — especially at the moment.

This summer’s Olympic Games are singularly important, not only because they are returning to their ancestral homeland, Greece, but also because they will be the first games to be held after September 11, 2001. As such, concerns over the preparations and, even more so, the vastly increased security measures (with which NATO has agreed to assist) must not overshadow these games’ unique ability to help restore, even minimally, the international concord shattered two and a half years ago. At a time when the world is unusually polarized in the wake of September 11 and the war in Iraq, the coming-together of nations in Athens is arguably more important than the sporting event itself. In light of current international conditions, the Greek decision to organize a global torch relay is especially important.

The founder of the modern Olympics, the French baron Pierre de Coubertin, would have approved. Coubertin saw the Olympics as a way of replacing combat with peaceful competition, leading to better understanding among the feuding powers of “Old Europe.” According to this philhellenic Frenchman, the Olympic spirit imbued sport with a means of underscoring the common bonds among nations and peoples. Indeed, the Olympic Games became a meeting-place of nations long before the creation of the United Nations.

Detractors may deride the Olympic spirit as an artificial construct that, in reality, has too often fallen short of its goals. But so what? Despite all the scandals — of which accusations of extensive steroid use is only the latest in a long series — the truth is that millions of people embrace the games’ idealist message. The Olympics survived their first big test, the First World War. Significantly, it was in that war’s wake that modern Greece gained a prominent role in the ceremonies associated with the games (heading the parade of nations, for example). Coubertin saw the return to antiquity as a way to restore Western belief in humanism and progress after the horrors of the recent war.

The Olympic spirit persisted in the decades that followed, notwithstanding the terrors of the twentieth century. Its proposition that international hostility could be sublimated into sporting competition remained a viable, if symbolic, rallying-point despite the political boycotts generated toward the end of the Cold War. Now, a year after the war in Iraq began, the polarization spawned by that conflict and Iraq’s subsequent occupation make this international gathering of athletes — rather than politicians — an invitation to the world to draw together.

Just how much world leaders, and the public, can use the ancient symbolism of the games this summer to defuse post-September 11 tensions remains to be seen. In addition to today’s political divisions, our world has gone through a cynical era of deconstructionist postmodernism in which all symbols have been systematically devalued. But in the face of the evident shortcomings of diplomacy and war, and persistent — and growing — differences over dealing with the terrorist threat, we cannot afford to dismiss any opportunity to unite the world on the playing fields of Athens, in theory and in practice.

Two hundred and one nations — ten more than the membership of the UN — will take part in the 2004 Olympics. The IOC has worked diligently to ensure the participation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the two countries devastated by war in September 11’s wake. Those nations still at odds over how to confront this post-September 11 world should show an equally strong commitment toward inclusiveness and healing the wounds of the past. That is why the opportunity to foster better understanding among them with the help of the Olympic spirit must not be lost.

Alexander Kitroeff teaches history at Haverford College and is a contributing editor to greekworks.com, which published his most recent book, Wrestling With the Ancients: Modern Greek Identity and the Olympics.

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Athens 2004