It was a majestic moment. The clouds came and then they went and in between the sun popped out. In that moment Ino Menegaki, the highest of "high priestesses", gathered before the great stone alter of the temple of Hera, took her torch, placed it in a parabolic mirror and lit it from the sun's rays. In a second, it seemed, the Olympic flame was born. The journey to the London 2012 Games had begun.
Most of us were gathered on the grassy banks above ancient Olympia's stadium. Those allowed into the sanctuary, the most sacred part of this most sacred place, were dignitaries and in the hushed silence of the lighting of the flame, as a white dove flew into the skies, the women among them wept.
"It was the first time I have ever seen that happen," said Tassos Papachristou of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, "and they were all British."
The symbol of fellowship and harmony aglow, the search began for an olive branch – the symbol of peace and a vital part of this great ancient ritual. And, when that was found, the high drama continued as the priestesses made their way out of the sanctuary, their cream robes flowing in the breeze that for a moment appeared to extinguish the flame, before Menegaki, an actress who has been performing the ceremony for years, relit the torch from one of the many backups the organisers ensure are always there.
"It was nothing really, just a momentary pause," said Papachristou, who has witnessed the ceremony at the home of the ancient Olympics countless times. "We always have two or three in reserve."
Then the priestesses came over the mound, some dancing, some walking, before those in the stadium – around 2,000 Britons, Greeks and an assortment of tourists – erupted into rapturous applause.
There were men among them also attired in ancient garb. And as they danced and the women gyrated – in honour of Apollo the god of light – Spyros Gianniotis, the British-born Greek 10km swimming world champion, given the privilege of being the first torch-bearer, waited below.
"It was very moving," enthused Lord Coe, head of the 2012 London Olympics organising committee, as dignitaries mingled afterwards over cocktails and canapés. "Greece is where I first competed as an 18-year-old in an international competition 37 years ago," he said, recalling his "backpack" days touring the sites including ancient Olympia. "I took part in two Olympic games after that. In a way this has completed my own Olympic journey," added the double gold medal winner.
He told the crowd the flame was the great connector "between the ancient Games and the modern Games, cities, towns and villages across Greece and Britain."
After 5,000 years the Greeks are good at this sort of thing. And, after the first modern Olympic flame lighting ceremony (held at Hitler's request for the 1936 Berlin Games) they have got better.
But then, nothing evokes Greece's historic, or even mystic, sense of mission more than ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Games – even in the midst of its worst crisis since the second world war.
For it was here in the verdant valleys and foothills of a remote corner of the Peloponnese that the Gods first wrestled and men – laying down their arms for "a sacred month" in a land riven by disputes and divided by war – subsequently wrestled and learned to be heroes too.
"No other site in Greece incites a feeling of peace and concord in you so gently, so compellingly," wrote Nikos Kazantzakis, the acclaimed modern Greek author. "With unerring eyes the ancients designated it as the place where all the Greek stocks would meet together in brotherhood every four years and in so [doing] they filled it with meaning and increased its tranquillity." It was the perfect place to meld harmony of mind and body, "the Greeks' supreme ideal".
Perhaps because of this, Gianniotis, a towering man, was almost at a loss for words to describe how he felt as the first to take the flame.
The Olympic symbol will travel almost 2,000 miles through Greece before it is officially handed to the London organising committee in Athens and flown, in its own seat in a custom-made box, on a British Airways plane on 17 May. From the Royal Navy airbase at Culdrose, Cornwall, where it lands, it begins a 70-day, 8,000-mile torch relay across Britain before reaching the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, east London, on the evening of 27 July for the opening ceremony of the Games.
"It was a unique moment," said Gianniotis, who ran through the stadium with torch and olive branch in hand followed by a cameraman on wheels. "It is an honour to compete in an Olympic Games but it is an even bigger honour to carry the flame."
Alex Loukos, 19, who was born and raised in Newham, east London, was the second torch-bearer. "I don't know if I can find the words," he said. "I'm British but I'm also half Greek. I'm both. It's emotional. This is a very big day."
His mother Sue, a receptionist, said: "He's been a bit nervous today. I think it's been all the anticipation. It's huge."
Each of the 8,000 torchbearers will run about 300 metres with the flame. In Greece, where it will cross mountains and rivers and seas, passing through 40 towns and 26 prefectures, 38 municipalities and five archaeological sites, organisers admit that this time round it will be a forlorn journey.
Mired in their worst recession in living memory, with little sign of light at the end of the tunnel, debt-stricken Greeks appeared in no mood to rejoice at the flame's lighting. In Athens, where television channels reporting on the country's economic crisis relegated it to the third news item, the euphoria that usually greets the lighting was replaced by a collective sense of foreboding that appears to have taken a hold over the nation. The relay has for the first time only been made possible thanks to private sponsorship.
"We were lucky to have sponsors such as BMW and Procter and Gamble who have helped us foot the bill for the ceremony and the relay," said Spyros Capralos, head of the Hellenic Olympic Committee. "We couldn't ask a state that can't even pay pensions and wages to do it." Capralos, a shipping magnate, admitted he had used "a lot of my own contacts" to help raise the funds.
In ancient Olympia flame-loving locals, however, are putting on a brave face. If the flame had a sex, it would be female, they say, and called Elpida (Hope). "It always carries a message of optimism with it," said Apostollos Kosmopoulos, a local bookshop owner who has been a torchbearer twice in the past 30 years. "Even in these difficult times."
So there goes the flame born from the sun on a ray of hope. London 2012 get ready. She is coming your way.
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