For the second consecutive time and the third in all, the traditional ceremony in the cradle of Olympism will be held in the absence of spectators, as for the Tokyo Games.
The flame of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games (February 4 to 20) will therefore be lit behind closed doors on Monday.
“Because of the situation linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, the lighting ceremony will be held in strict compliance with local health protocol,” announced the Hellenic Olympic Committee, which thus renews the drastic measures taken in March 2020. Before the health crisis, in the history of the Games in the modern era, the flame was only lit behind closed doors in 1984, when Greek organizers wanted to protest against the commercial nature of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
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The ceremony will be held in front of an audience limited to members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Greek and Chinese committees, in the presence of the President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou and the President of the IOC Thomas Bach. As traditionally, the flame must be lit this Monday before noon by the rays of the sun on the ruins of the temple of Hera in Olympia, seat of the Games of Antiquity in Greece.
Sunday, the sun was not there for the rehearsal on the ancient temple of Olympia.
But on Monday, a radiant sun is announced, and its rays should pass safely through the parabolic mirror and ignite the torch wielded by priestess Xanthi Georgiou.
The flame will then be carried by the first torchbearer, the Greek skier Giannis Antoniou, followed by the Chinese Li Jiajun, five times Olympic champion in speed skating.
“It is one of the greatest honors for an athlete to be the first Olympic torch bearer,” said Antoniou.
“Particularly for me who is trying to qualify and participate in these Games,” he said on Sunday, on the sidelines of the rehearsal, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of the creation of the IOC Executive Board.
An express relay
Greece's Vasilis Papavassiliou - a local athlete - will be the last to carry the flame on Monday in Olympia, as organizers have decided the relay will be "shorter than in the recent past".
In accordance with the drastic measures taken in Beijing, without foreign spectators, the Greek Committee has indeed further strengthened health precautions for these second Coronavirus Games after Tokyo.
"There will be no torch relay on Greek soil", warned the organizers in mid-October: once lit in Olympia, the flame will be transferred to spend the night from Monday to Tuesday at the Acropolis in Athens, where Tibetan activists, three of whom were arrested, staged a brief protest on Sunday against the Beijing 2022 Games.
After a night in the shade of the Sacred Rock, the flame of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will be delivered in record time to the Chinese organizers: in less than 24 hours, it will have been transmitted to the Beijing-2022 committee during a ceremony without public Tuesday noon at the Panathenaic stadium in Athens, before flying to Beijing. Usually, the flame travels hundreds of kilometers in several days, crosses about fifty cities and archaeological sites in Greece, relayed by artists and sportsmen from all over the world.
But in March 2020, with the first cases of coronavirus in Greece, spectators allowed to attend the torch relay had flocked without precaution, to cheer on Hollywood actors, forcing organizers to stop the race.
The route was interrupted in Sparta, where the crowd had gathered to cheer the Greek-American actor Billy Zane, who notably played in "Titanic", and the British actor Gerard Butler, who played King Leonidas of Sparta in "300".
