For the Summer Games, the first Olympic torch relay was in 1936. Reviving the idea of the torch races in Ancient Greece, the Secretary General of the Organising Committee for the Games in Berlin, Carl Diem, proposed that a flame be lit at Olympia and then relayed on foot to Berlin. That year, more than 3,000 athletes from seven countries took part in the relay.
For the Winter Games, the first Torch relay was at the 1952 Games in Oslo. It did not begin in Olympia, Greece, but in the Morgedal valley in Norway. It is only since the 1964 Games in Innsbruck that the relay has started in Olympia.