Olympic Torch For 2016 Rio Games Lit At Ancient Greek Site

Athens: The Olympic torch has been lit in southern Greece, kicking off the countdown to Rio 2016 Games.

In an elaborate ceremony in the ruins of the Temple of Hera, an actor playing the role of “high priestess” kindled the flame using the rays of the sun in a concave mirror. She then carried the sacred fire into the same dusty stadium where athletes competed nearly 3,000 years ago in the ancient Olympic Games. The ritual concluded when the high priestess passed the flame to Eleftherios Petrounias, a gymnastics world champion from Greece, to launch the Rio Olympic Torch Relay.

On August 5, the flame will arrive in Rio where the final torchbearer – always a closely guarded secret – will ignite the cauldron in a manner that is also top-secret for the first Olympic Games in South America. But first, the flame will spend a week traveling around Greece, including a dash across the aptly named Rio-Antirrio Bridge and a pass through a refugee camp. On April 27, the flame, which is always accompanied by a backup, will be handed over to Rio organizers in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, where the modern Games began in 1896.

The torch relay will then proceed to Switzerland to United Nations headquarters in Geneva and the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. On May 3, the flame will arrive in Brazil where the torch relay will go through 329 cities and towns in 95 days. More than 12,000 torchbearers will have the honor of carrying the flame, usually on short stints.

Although inspired by the traditions of ancient Greece, the Olympic torch relay is only 80 years old. Carl Diem, a German sports administrator, came up with the idea in 1936 for the Berlin Games. According to the International Olympic Committee, the flame is a “manifestation of the positive values that man has always associated with the symbolism of fire,” and its purity is guaranteed by the special way of lighting it with the sun’s rays.

The torch relay has been a part of the summer Games ever since and the flame has traveled in space, underwater, by satellite, by Pony Express and by camel.

In 1952, the Winter Games torch relay began with the original lighting ceremony in Norway at the hearth of Sondre Norheim’s birthplace, the founder of Telemark skiing. In 1956, the flame was lit in Rome, then the ceremony went back to Norway prior to the Squaw Valley 1960 Games. Since 1964, the Winter Games torch relay has begun in Olympia.

The ceremony also inspires the world and serves as a countdown to the Games, which are just over 100 days away.

The Olympic flame will burn brightly until the Closing Ceremony on August 21, when it will be extinguished.