 "Greek actress Xanthi Georgiou, playing the role of the High Priestess, lights the torch during the lighting of the Olympic flame at ancient Olympia site, birthplace of the ancient Olympics in Greece. AP")
The sacred flame for the 2024 Paris Olympics is to be lit Tuesday in Olympia, birthplace of the ancient Games, to mark the beginning of the torch relay stretching from the Acropolis to the South Pacific.
Hundreds of dignitaries and spectators are due to attend the ritual in the Peloponnese town in southwestern Greece where the Olympics were born in 776 BCE, and where the ceremony is held every two years ahead of the Summer and Winter Olympics.
For the first time since coronavirus pandemic resulted in a toned-down Games in Tokyo and Beijing, spectators will be able to attend the torch relay events.
At a rehearsal on Monday, Greek actress Mary Mina brought the Olympic flame to life with the help of a parabolic polished mirror before handing it to the first torch bearer, Tokyo Games rowing champion Stefanos Ntouskos.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThat flame torch will be used as a backup in case weather pevents the mirror from producing flame.
The torch tradition goes back to the ancient Olympics when a sacred flame burned throughout the Games. The tradition was then revived in 1936 for the Berlin Games.
Retired French swimmer Laure Manaudou, who won a gold medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics, is strongly tipped to be France’s first torchbearer in Olympia.
Where will the ceremony take place?
The flame-lighting ceremony will take place at the ruins of the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera, with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach the leading dignitaries.
French sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo will also be in attendance.
What to expect at the flame-lighting ceremony?
“We hear nature, the rustling of the leaves, there is a sacred silence,” Artemis Ignatiou, the choreographer and artistic director of the Olympic flame ceremony, told state TV ERT about the ceremony’s dance performance.
“There are moments when we feel as if we are hovering above the ground. It’s like travelling back in time,” she said.
American mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato will deliver the Olympic anthem.
Nana Mouskouri, the 89-year-old Greek singer, has been invited to perform at the ceremony.
How is the flame lit?
An actor playing as an ancient Greek priestess holds a silver torch containing highly combustible materials over a concave mirror. The sun’s rays bounce off every inch of the burnished metal half-globe and come together at one extremely hot point, which ignites the torch.
The flame is used to light the first runner’s torch — champagne-coloured this year for France — and a long relay through Greece leads to the 26 April handover at the Panathenaic stadium in Athens.
Can something go awry at the ceremony?
Rain. Heavy cloud cover. Then the mirror wouldn’t work. But the organisers hold several rehearsals in the days leading up to the official lighting, where a backup flame is kept in case the need arose.
Then there is the chance of protests. Twice this century — during the lighting ceremonies for the Beijing Summer and Winter Games — human-rights activists disrupted the ceremony. Even after the embarrassment of the first incident in 2008, Greek police were unable to anticipate and prevent the second, 14 years later.
The protest in 2008 led to the scrapping of torch relays outside Greece and the host country.
In the host city, the torches are designed to stay lit, but there have been glitches in the past. During the relay for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, wind blew out the torch, which was sneakily rekindled with a lighter. The same quick fix was used at Montreal in 1976, when rain extinguished the Olympic cauldron.
What is the route for the Olympic flame?
During the 11-day relay in Greece, some 600 torchbearers will carry the flame over a distance of 5,000 kilometres through 41 municipalities.
The Olympic flame will be handed over to Paris 2024 organisers at the all-marble Panathenaic Stadium, site of the first modern Olympic Games of 1896, on 26 April.
On 27 April, the flame will begin its journey to France on board the 19th-century three-masted barque Belem, which was launched just weeks after the 1896 Games in Athens. A French historical monument, the Belem carried out trade journeys to Brazil, Guyana and the Caribbean for nearly two decades.
France’s last surviving three-mast steel-hulled boat, it is expected to arrive in Marseille on 8 May.
Upon arriving in France, ten thousand torchbearers will carry the flame across 64 territories. It will travel across 400 towns and dozens of tourist attractions during its 12,000-kilometre journey through mainland France and overseas French territories in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific.
On 26 July it will be the centrepiece of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on the river Seine – the first time it has not been held in the Games’ main stadium.