Countdown Begins: Paris 2024 Olympic Torch Lit

Nearly 100 days before the 2024 Paris Games open, the Olympic flame will be lit in ancient Olympia for a torch relay stretching from the Acropolis to French Polynesia.

For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic imposed toned-down events for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2022 Beijing Winter Games, spectators will be able to attend the torch relay events.

Some 600 dignitaries are expected at the ceremony, headed by Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

The ritual will see actresses in the role of ancient priestesses coaxing the Olympic flame into life with the help of a parabolic polished mirror in Olympia, southwestern Greece, where the Games were born in 776 BC.

American mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato is to deliver the Olympic anthem.

The ceremony is conducted at the ruins of the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera, and sets off the Olympic torch relay that marks the countdown for each Games.

The torch harks back to the ancient Olympics, when a sacred flame burned throughout the Games. The tradition was revived in 1936 for the Berlin Games. 

The first relay runner will be Greece's 2020 Olympics rowing champion Stefanos Douskos.

Retired French swimmer Laure Manaudou, who won her first gold medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics, is strongly tipped to be France's first torchbearer in Olympia, according to sources in Greece.

During the 11-day relay on Greek soil, some 600 torchbearers will carry the flame over a distance of 5,000 kilometers through 41 municipalities.

The Olympic flame will be handed over to Paris 2024 organizers in a ceremony at the all-marble Panathenaic Stadium, site of the first modern Olympic Games of 1896, on April 26.

On July 26 it will form the centerpiece of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on the river Seine -- the first time it has not been held in the Games' main stadium.