Paris 2024: Olympics flame is lit at the Greek cradle of ancient games

ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece (AP) — Even without the help of Apollo, the flame that must burn at Paris Olympic Games was lit on Tuesday at the site of the ancient games in southern Greece.

Cloudy skies prevented traditional lightingwhen an actress dressed as a Greek priestess uses the sun to light a silver torch – after offering a symbolic prayer to Apollo, the ancient Greek sun god.

Instead, she used a backup flame that had been lit in the same location on Monday, during the final rehearsal.

Normally the first in a group of priestesses in long, pleated robes immerses the fuel-filled torch in a parabolic mirror which focuses the sun’s rays on it, and fire springs out.

But this time she didn’t even try, heading straight for the emergency flame, kept in a copy of an ancient Greek pot. Ironically, a few minutes later the sun rose.

From the ancient stadium of Olympia, a relay of torchbearers will carry the flame along a 5,000 kilometer route across Greece, including several islands, until the torch is handed over to the organizers of the Paris Games in Athens on April 26.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the lighting of the flame combined “a pilgrimage to our past in ancient Olympia and an act of faith in our future.”

“In these difficult times… when wars and conflicts are increasing, people are fed up with all the hatred, aggression and negative news,” he said. “We long for something that brings us together; something unifying; something that gives us hope.

Thousands of spectators from around the world gathered in Olympia for Tuesday’s event, amid the ruined temples and sports fields where the ancient games took place from 776 BC to 393 AD.

The sprawling site, set in a lush valley at the confluence of two rivers, is prettiest in spring, teeming with pink-flowered Judas trees, small blue irises and occasional red anemones.

Greek authorities maintained high security around Olympia on Tuesday after protests by human rights activists disrupted lighting ceremonies for the Beijing summer and winter games. Armed police stopped arriving vehicles and checked for explosives, while sniffer dogs combed the grounds.

The first torchbearer was Greek rower Stefanos Douskos, gold medalist in 2021 in Tokyo. He ran towards a nearby monument which contains the heart of French Baron Pierre de Coubertinthe driving force behind the modern gaming renaissance.

The next runner up was Laure Manaudou, a French swimmer who won three medals in Athens in 2004. She gave way to top European Union official Margaritis Schinas, a Greek.

IOC Bach congratulated Paris organizers for doing “a remarkable job” with preparations for matches from July 26 to August 11.

He also highlighted their environmental impact, saying that cleanup efforts will allow you to swim in the Seine which runs through Paris, “for the first time in a hundred years”.

IOC politics also briefly reared their head in Olympia, with the leaders of two sports federations criticizing track and field leader Sebastian Coe for breaking with Olympic tradition last week by promising prices of $50,000 to each of its gold medalists in Paris. The money will be paid from the share of Olympic Games revenue that the IOC pays to the governing bodies of Olympic sports.

The president of the International Cycling Union, David Lappartient, complained that Coe had not consulted other sports before announcing his decision.

“We really believe that this is not the Olympic spirit,” Lappartient said. “If we focus the money … only on top athletes, only on gold, then of course many opportunities will disappear for athletes around the world.”

Coe is widely expected to run for the IOC presidency, which is expected to become vacant in 2025. Lappartient is close to Bach and is increasingly seen as a potential successor.

From Greece, the Olympic flame will leave the Athens port of Piraeus on Belema French three-masted ship built in 1896, the year of the first modern games in Athens.

According to Captain Aymeric Gibet, it will take place on May 8 in the port of Marseille, in the south of France, a city founded by Greek settlers around 2,600 years ago.

The Belem arrived Monday in Katakolo, near Olympia. Among the spectators were a small group of enthusiastic tourists from the Brittany region of northwest France, where the ship’s home port of Nantes is located, 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 would carry the flame…we said we have to do it.”

But Pasquet said he would have to watch the Paris Games from home.

“For us, it would be really very expensive, unaffordable,” to go to the scene, he said. “So we will watch them on television… from our armchairs.”

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Graham Dunbar in Geneva, Switzerland, and Theodora Tongas in ancient Olympia contributed.

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AP Olympics https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games