ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece — Even with out the assistance of Apollo, the flame that’s to burn on the Paris Olympics was kindled Tuesday on the website of the traditional video games in southern Greece.
Cloudy skies prevented the standard lighting, when an actress dressed as an historical Greek priestess makes use of the solar to ignite a silver torch — after providing up a symbolic prayer to Apollo, the traditional Greek solar god.
As a substitute, she used a backup flame that had been lit on the identical spot Monday, throughout the closing rehearsal.
Usually, the foremost of a gaggle of priestesses in lengthy, pleated attire dips the fuel-filled torch right into a parabolic mirror which focuses the solar’s rays on it, and fireplace spurts forth.
However this time she did not even strive, going straight for the backup flame, stored in a replica of an historical Greek pot. Sarcastically, a couple of minutes later the solar shone forth.
From the traditional stadium in Olympia, a relay of torchbearers will carry the flame alongside a 5,000-kilometer (3,100-mile) route by way of Greece, together with a number of islands, till the handover to Paris Video games organizers in Athens on April 26.
Worldwide Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach stated the flame lighting mixed “a pilgrimage to our previous in historical Olympia, and an act of religion in our future.”
“In these troublesome instances … with wars and conflicts on the rise, persons are fed up with all of the hate, the aggression and damaging information,” he stated. “We’re eager for one thing which brings us collectively; one thing that’s unifying; one thing that offers us hope.”
1000’s of spectators from everywhere in the world packed Olympia for Tuesday’s occasion amid the ruined temples and sports activities grounds the place the traditional video games have been held from 776 B.C.-393 A.D.
The sprawling website, in a lush valley by the confluence of two rivers, is at its prettiest within the spring, teeming with pink-flowering Judas bushes, small blue irises and the occasional purple anemone.
Greek authorities maintained excessive safety round Olympia on Tuesday, after protests by rights activists disrupted the lighting ceremonies for the Beijing summer season and winter video games. Armed police stopped incoming autos and checked for explosives, whereas sniffer canine combed the grounds.
The primary torchbearer was Greek rower Stefanos Douskos, a gold medalist in 2021 in Tokyo. He ran to a close-by monument that accommodates the guts of French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the driving power behind the trendy revival of the video games.
The subsequent runner was Laure Manaudou, a French swimmer who gained three medals at Athens in 2004. She handed over to senior European Union official Margaritis Schinas, a Greek.
The IOC’s Bach praised Paris organizers for doing “an impressive job” with preparations for the July 26-August 11 video games.
He additionally highlighted their environmental impression, saying that cleanup efforts will make it doable to swim within the River Seine, which traverses Paris, “for the primary time in 100 years.”
IOC politics briefly reared their head in Olympia as nicely, with the heads of two sports activities federations criticizing monitor and subject chief Sebastian Coe for breaking with Olympic custom final week by promising prize cash of $50,000 to every of its gold medalists in Paris. The cash might be paid from the share of Olympic video games revenues that the IOC pays governing our bodies of Olympic sports activities.
Worldwide Biking Union President David Lappartient complained that Coe didn’t seek the advice of with different sports activities earlier than asserting his transfer.
“We actually consider that that’s not the Olympic spirit,” Lappartient stated. “If we focus the cash … on solely high athletes, solely gold, then after all lots of alternatives will disappear for athletes everywhere in the world.”
Coe has been broadly anticipated to run for the IOC presidency, which ought to develop into vacant in 2025. Lappartient is near Bach and is more and more seen as a possible successor.
From Greece, the Olympic flame will journey from Athens’ port of Piraeus on the Belem, a French three-masted crusing ship in-built 1896 — the 12 months of the primary fashionable video games in Athens.
In line with Captain Aymeric Gibet, it is due on Could 8 within the southern French port of Marseille, a metropolis based by Greek colonists some 2,600 years in the past.
The Belem arrived in Katakolo, close to Olympia, on Monday. Lookers-on included a small, enthusiastic group of vacationers from the northwestern French area of Brittany, the place the ship’s homeport of Nantes is, waving French and Breton flags.
“We thought it will be a novel alternative to see the flame lighting on the historic website of Olympia,” stated Jean-Michel Pasquet from Lorient, close to Nantes. “And once we additionally learnt the Belem would carry the flame … we stated we should do that.”
However Pasquet stated he’d have to look at the Paris Video games from house.
“For us, it will be actually very costly, unaffordable,” to go to the venues, he stated. “So we’ll watch them on tv … from our armchairs.”
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Graham Dunbar in Geneva, Switzerland, and Theodora Tongas in Historical Olympia contributed.
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AP Olympics https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
