Olympic Flame Relay operations under a ‘world's best practices’ regime: a conversation with Steven McCarthy

Abstract

Steven McCarthy is founder, Chairman and CEO of Além International Management Inc., today's leading transnational provider of operational services for the Olympic Flame Relay (OFR). As operations manager for the 1996 Atlanta relay, managing director of the 2002 Salt Lake City relay, and operations manager of the international segment of the 2004 Athens relay, as well as the author of the IOC's official OFR technical manual, McCarthy has played the leading role in innovating key aspects and codifying the whole of today's ‘world's best practices’ model of OFR production. In this article, he discusses the origins of transnational OFR operations companies, the core ritual responsibilities of relay supervisors, security and safety issues, negotiation strategies with local authorities, and collaboration and conflicts among commercial sponsors, organizing committees, and operations personnel. A persistent theme in the conversation is just how universal or ethnocentric any world's best practices model turns out to be, and what the future role of the central IOC administration should be in protecting and replenishing the symbolic and moral capital of the OFR and through it the Olympic Movement. This conversation between the OFR's leading ethnographer and its leading transnational manager provides an unprecedented backstage view of one of the world's most important rituals, discussing dramatic issues and episodes equally unknown to Olympic publics and authorities.