Greek actress Mary Mina lights the torch during the rehearsal for the lighting ceremony.
Olympia, Greece:
The torch for the 2024 Paris Olympics will be lit on Tuesday in ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the ancient Olympics, in a spectacular torch relay stretching from the Acropolis to the South Pacific.
The small town on the Peloponnese peninsula in southwestern Greece, where the Olympic Games were born in 776 B.C., hosts a ceremony every two years for the Summer and Winter Olympics, with hundreds of dignitaries and spectators expected to attend the ceremony. .
Spectators will be allowed to attend the torch relay event for the first time since the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics were scaled back due to the coronavirus pandemic.
At a rehearsal on Monday, Greek actress Mary Mina held the Olympic torch with the help of a polished parabolic mirror before handing it to the first torchbearer, 2020 Olympic rowing champion Stefanos Ntouskos. breathed life into it.
This will be used as a backup in case cloudy skies are expected on Tuesday and the mirrors are unable to produce a flame.
The 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 President Thomas Bach leading the list of dignitaries.
French Sports Minister Amélie Houdea-Castella and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo will also be in attendance.
Artemis Ignatio, choreographer and artistic director of the Olympic Torch Ceremony, told state television ERT of the dance performance: “You hear the sounds of nature, you hear the rustling of the leaves, and there is a sacred silence.”
“There are moments when you feel like you're floating above the ground. It's like you've traveled back in time,” she says.
American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato will sing the Olympic Hymn.
The torch is reminiscent of the ancient Olympic Games, where a sacred fire burned throughout the games. This tradition was revived at his 1936 Berlin Games.
Greek sources say former French swimmer Laure Manadou, who won gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics, is likely to become France's first Olympia torchbearer.
The 11-day relay on Greek soil will see around 600 torchbearers carry the torch 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) through 41 municipalities.
carried by boat
The Olympic torch will be handed over to Paris 2024 organizers in a ceremony on April 26 at the all-marble Panathenaic Stadium, site of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.
Nana Mouskouri, an 89-year-old Greek singer with fans all over the world, was invited to perform at the ceremony.
The torch will begin its journey to France on April 27 aboard the Belem, a 19th century three-masted sailing ship launched just weeks after the 1896 Athens Games.
The Belém, a historic French landmark, spent nearly 20 years on trade trips to Brazil, Guyana, and the Caribbean.
It is the last remaining three-masted steel-hulled boat in France and is scheduled to arrive in Marseille on May 8th.
Afterwards, 10,000 torchbearers will carry the torch across 64 territories in France.
It's a 12,000km journey through mainland France and French overseas territories in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean, visiting 400 towns and dozens of attractions.
It will be the centerpiece of the Paris Olympic Opening Ceremony, which will be held on the Seine River on July 26, and will be the first time it has been held outside the main stadium of the Games.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
