IOC President Jacques Rogge called the Beijing Olympic torch relay a crisis.

“It is a crisis, there is no doubt about that,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said Thursday. “But the IOC has weathered many bigger storms.”

“The history of the Olympic Games is fraught by a lot of challenges,” Rogge said. “This is a challenge but you cannot compare to what we had in the past.”

However, British IOC member Craig Reedie believes the worst is over.

“I hope that we are through it now,” he said. “I think the furor that has affected the torch in London, Paris and to some extent in San Francisco will now die down. … But it is fair to say that this kind of political protest is a new experience for the IOC and we have all found it extremely uncomfortable.

Trouble however, still looms over the relay in Australia and India - not to mention the Tibet leg of the relay.

Argentina, the only stop in Latin America, is deploying thousands of security personnel to secure the torch relay - 1,300 federal police, 1,500 naval police and some 3,000 traffic police and volunteers.

Read more: IOC president Rogge calls torch relay a ‘crisis’