After a long journey around the world, the Olympic cauldron has been lit!
The identity of the person who will light the Olympic torch near the end of the opening ceremony is kept a closely guarded secret until the final minutes.
After Rafael Nadal returned to the Seine with the torch, he was joined by Serena Williams, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci and U.S. track and field star Carl Lewis in a boat, who took turns holding the Olympic torch.
The boats sailed up the Seine, making up what NBC commentator Mike Tirico called a “reverse trip” for the parade.
Eventually, they disembarked and handed the torch to French tennis legend Amelie Mauresmo, who ran from the river up the steps and through the city streets back to the Louvre, where she then handed the torch to French NBA player Tony Parker. The two ran together through an empty courtyard, past the iconic I.M. Pei glass pyramid.
The Olympic flame was then handed over to three French Paralympic athletes, who then ran to hand it over to handball player Miguel Sánchez-Migalon. The group of torchbearers, all dressed in white, quickly swelled to include 18 former Olympians, including France's oldest ever Olympic champion, Charles Coste, who turned 100 this year.
The final two torchbearers, Teddy Riner and Marie-Josée Perec, lit the cauldron.
Perec is a retired French track and field sprinter and Riner is a former Olympic judoka (practitioner of the Japanese martial art of judo).
The cauldron is usually lit by a celebrity from the host country, and the final torchbearer for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics was tennis star Naomi Osaka.
The Olympic flame was lit in Greece in April and then travelled around the world ahead of the games, first in a relay around Greece before being placed on board the Belém, France's oldest three-masted schooner, which was launched in 1896 when the first modern Olympic Games were held. After spending 10 days at sea, the flame landed in Marseille, France.
The Olympic flame then traveled around the country, with events at iconic locations such as the Palace of Versailles and the Normandy landing beaches, and crossed the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans as part of a “maritime relay” to reach six overseas territories: Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, French Polynesia (where the Olympic surfing events will take place), New Caledonia and Reunion.
