Torches, priestesses and time travel: Watch the Olympic flame begin its journey to Beijing

The road to the Olympic Games begins with a whisper.

Far from the hustle of athletic competition and the bustle of final preparations for the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, in the picturesque countryside in Ancient Olympia – site of the Ancient Olympic Games, a flame is gathered from the heavens in a reverent hush.

While dignitaries including IOC President Thomas Bach will be in attendance, the Olympic flame is the star of the show. Unassuming, quieter even than the birds chirping gently among the gnarled branches of nearby olive trees, the Olympic flame is the focal point. The seed from which the upcoming Games will grow.

A bridge to the spirit of the Ancient Olympic Games that once filled the Olympia Stadium with the raw and raucous energy of ancient competition will once again take flight, as the Olympics edges closer.

What happens at the lighting and handover ceremonies?

In the Temple of Hera, built at the end of the Seventh Century BC, the High Priestess calls out to Apollo, god of the ancients most closely associated with the sun. She pleads for a “sacred silence” and “clear skies” so the flame may be lit.

While ancient myth has it that Prometheus, great champion of human endeavour and promise, stole flame from the gods, today it is given over freely. On this Monday autumn morning, a Greek actress, Xanthi Georgiou, dressed in the traditional garb, or chiton, and attended to by 35 priestesses, will kneel over a parabolic mirror and gather the sun’s rays to a bloom of flame.

From Georgiou’s torch, modelled on the pillars of the Temple of the great goddess Hera, the flame will pass. It will move from her modest torch – one of only four made – to a bowl, before a second torch is used to transfer the flame to one of the more modern torches designed specifically for the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.

With the flame gathered in the bowl, the ceremony proceeds to the Olympia Stadium through the remnants of a crypt where ancient athletes once entered the competition grounds. The dignitaries and invited guests are guided by Kouri – twelve young men standing in for the heralds who once announced the Games of Antiquity to the city states of Greece.

After traditional dance and musical performance on the grass-covered hillside of the old Stadium, the Estiada, second to the High Priestess, appears with the bowl and places it on a small stone altar. The High Priestess repeats her prayer to Apollo, asking him to “wreath the winners of the Sacred Race” as she prepares to send the flame away on its journey along with a traditional olive branch, symbol of peace and victory.

There’s a special stop before the flame leaves the ruins of old Olympia - a visit to the monument to Pierre de Coubertin. There, deep inside a marble pillar, lay the once-beating heart of the father of the modern Olympics. While the rest of De Coubertin rests in Switzerland, the IOC founder insisted his heart be entombed in Greece in a final act of commitment to the Olympic Games he helped conceive as a symbol of unity and competition.

• VIDEO | Meet Pierre de Coubertin: Founder of the Modern Olympics

Message of hope

The Olympic flame’s arrival at the Beijing National Stadium on 4 February 2022 will be a homecoming. It was just 13 years ago, on a hazy evening at the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Summer Games, when a lone runner, hoisted to the collar that rings the top of the arena, ran on air and touched his torch to the cauldron to begin the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

That runner was Li Ning, three-time gold medal-winning Chinese gymnast from the 1984 Los Angeles Games. He was the final link in the human chain that year and his loping strides closed an astonishing display of human precision.

This time, however, it’s the ice and snow of the Winter Olympics for the People’s Republic of China rather than the tracks and green fields of the Summer Games. It’s fitting, then, that the first torchbearer should be Ioannis Antoniou, Greek Alpine skier who participated at the PyeongChang Games in 2018.

He’ll receive the flame from Georgiou, in the ceremonial role of High Priestess for a second Games running, while a dove – another symbol of peace – is released to flight.

The flame will arrive in Beijing in the early hours of 20 October.

Key dates and times

• 18 October: Flame lighting ceremony, 11:20am (local) start
• 19 October: Handover ceremony, 11:50am (local) start
• 20 October: Arrival ceremony in Beijing