Olympic flame is lit at birthplace of ancient games
The flame for the 2024 Paris Olympics was lit on Tuesday at the site of the ancient games in Ancient Olympia, southern Greece.
Despite the gloomy weather which prevented the traditional lighting- which involves an ancient Greek priestess using the sun to ignite the torch after offering a prayer to Apollo, the ancient Greek sun god - actress Mary Mina, used a back up flame to kickstart the epic torch relay.
Normally, the group of priestesses would use a parabolic mirror to light the torch using the sun's rays, but because of the cloudy skies, they had to use a back up flame that was kept in a copy of an ancient Greek pot and lit on the same spot during their final rehearsals on Monday.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the flame lighting combined "a pilgrimage to our past in ancient Olympia, and an act of faith in our future."
A relay of torchbearers will carry the flame along a 5,000-kilometre route through Greece, including several islands, until the handover to Paris Games organisers in Athens on April 26.
"In these difficult times ... with wars and conflicts on the rise, people are fed up with all the hate, the aggression and negative news," Bach said.
"We are longing for something which brings us together; something that is unifying; something that gives us hope."
Thousands of spectators from all over the world packed Olympia for the event, amid the ruins of temples and sports grounds where the ancient games were held from 776 BC - 393 AD.
The first torchbearer was Greek rower Stefanos Douskos, who was a gold medalist in 2021, followed by Laure Manaudou, a French swimmer who won three medals at Athens in 2004.
Manaudou then handed it over to a Greek senior European Union official, Margaritis Schinas.
From Greece, the Olympic flame will travel from Athens' port of Piraeus on the Belem, a French three-masted sailing ship built in 1896 - the year that the first modern games began in Athens.
On May 8, it's due in the southern French port of Marseille, a city founded by Greek colonists around 2600 years ago.
Images: Getty