I watch the Olympic Torch Relay

It's a very exciting time to be in England right now! Everybody in this country is getting ready for the 2012 Summer Olympics, which will begin on Friday. The Summer Olympics are held every four years. Four years ago, in 2008, the Olympics were in Beijing, China.

It's tradition at the Olympics that a flame is lit before the games begin. Even during the original Olympics in Ancient Greece, a flame was kept burning the entire time that the games lasted. For the modern Olympics, the flame is lit in Greece and then carried by a relay of thousands of people to reach the place where the games will be held.


When the relay passed through Oxford last week, I went to go see it. Lots of people lined the streets to watch. Everybody was very excited to get to see the torch.

I'm standing with lots of others waiting for the torch to pass.

All the people are getting their cameras out so they can try to take a picture of the torch.

Unfortunately, the woman carrying the torch ran very fast, so I could not get a good picture of it to show you. Here is a picture of the backs of the people running with the torch.

The torch has already gone past me!

Fortunately, other people have managed to take better pictures. This is a photo from the following day, when the torch was passed to a man named Roger Bannister. In 1954, Bannister became the first person in the world ever to run one mile in less than 4 minutes. When he ran the first 4-minute mile, he was a student at Oxford. He set the record on the Iffley Track in Oxford, just a few blocks from where I watched the torch go by. Now, of course, lots of the runners in the Olympics can run as fast as Bannister did in 1954 – but he was the first. Here's a picture from the newspaper of him carrying the torch.

Roger Bannister (left) gets ready to carry the Olympic torch on the Iffley Track in Oxford.