The flame that will burn at the Paris Olympics was lit at the site of the ancient games in southern Greece
ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece — The flame to burn at the Paris Olympics was lit at the site of the ancient games in southern Greece.
Cloudy skies thwarted efforts Tuesday to produce the flame the usual way, when an actress dressed as an ancient Greek priestess used the sun to light a silver torch.
A spare flame was used instead, which was lit in the same spot on Monday, during the final rehearsal.
The flame will then be carried from the ruined temples and sports grounds of Ancient Olympia by a relay of torchbearers. The 11-day trip through Greece ends with the handover in Athens to the organizers of Paris 2024.
THIS IS UPDATED NEWS. Earlier AP story follows below.
One way or another, the flame that will burn at the Paris Olympics will be lit on Tuesday at the site of the ancient games in southern Greece.
Forecast cloudy skies may thwart efforts to produce the flame the usual way, when an actress dressed as an ancient Greek priestess uses the sun to light a silver torch.
If that doesn’t work, the French organizers will get their flame from a backup option, which was successfully lit in the final rehearsal on Monday.
In an elaborately choreographed ceremony first used in 1936, the first of a group of priestesses in long, pleated dresses offers a prayer to the ancient Greek sun god Apollo. She then dips the fuel-filled lantern into a parabolic mirror, which focuses the sun’s rays onto it, and the fire erupts.
From the ancient stadium in Olympia, a relay of torchbearers will carry the flame more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) across Greece until it is handed over to Paris Games organizers in Athens on April 26.
Thousands of spectators from around the world are expected for Tuesday’s event amid the ruined temples and sports grounds where the ancient games were held from 776 BC to 393 AD.
The sprawling site, set in a lush valley by the confluence of two rivers, is at its most beautiful in the spring, teeming with pink flowering jujube trees, tiny blue irises and the occasional red anemone.
The first torchbearer will be Greek rower Stefanos Douskos, gold medalist in 2021 in Tokyo. He will run to a nearby monument that contains the heart of French baron Pierre de Coubertin, the driving force behind the games’ modern revival.
The next competitor will be Laure Manodou, a French swimmer who won three medals in Athens in 2004. She will hand over to high-ranking European Union official Margaritis Schinas, a Greek.
The flame will travel from the Athenian port of Piraeus on the Belem, a French three-masted sailing ship built in 1896 – the year of the first modern games in Athens.
According to Captain Aymeric Gibbet, this should happen on May 8 in the southern French port of Marseille, a city founded by Greek colonists some 2,600 years ago.
The belem arrived in Katakolo, near Olympia, on Monday. Onlookers included a small, enthusiastic group of tourists from the northwestern French region of Brittany, where the ship’s port is Nantes, waving French and Breton flags.
“We thought it would be a unique opportunity to see the flame lit at the historic site of Olympia,” said Jean-Michel Pasquet from Lorient, near Nantes. “And when we also learned that Belem was going to carry the flame … we said we have to do this.”
But Pasquet said he would have to watch the Paris games from home.
“It would be really, really expensive, prohibitive” for us to go to the locations, he said. “So we’ll be watching them on TV… from our armchairs.”
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AP Olympic Games https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
