BBC News
The flame is lit from the rays of the sun, representing 'purity'
The
Olympic flame will be lit in a ceremony in Olympia, Greece, on Thursday
ahead of the start of the torch relay and the London 2012 Games.
The flame is kindled by a 'high priestess' who captures the morning sun's rays in a parabolic mirror.
The ceremony comes amid political and economic turmoil in the
home of the Ancient Olympics, where a week-long leg of the relay will
be held.
The flame flies to Britain on 18 May for a 70-day relay around the UK.
Locog Chairman Lord Coe, International Olympic Committee
president Jacques Rogge and Hellenic Olympic Committee president Spyros
Capralos will be in Olympia for the moment marking the countdown to
London 2012.
Lord Coe told the BBC: "Today is the rallying call to the
athletes - the best athletes of their generation - to come to London.
That in itself is a big moment because it's the biggest sporting event
in the calendar."
World champion swimmer Spyros Gianniotis will be the first to carry the torch
The lighting ceremony takes place in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera from 11:30 local time (09:30BST)
The flame - an Olympic symbol meant to represent purity
because it comes from the sun - is then placed in an urn and taken to
the stadium where the ancient Olympic Games were staged.
There, it will light the London 2012 torch of Liverpool-born
Greek world champion 10km swimmer Spyros Gianniotis, who will carry it
on the first leg of the relay around Greece.
He will pass it on to Alex Loukos, 19, the first British torchbearer,
a boxer and, in 2005, one of a delegation of east London schoolchildren
who travelled to Singapore as part of London's final bid for the Games.
The torch is due to travel 2,900kms (1,800 miles) through the
country, carried by 500 torchbearers, on a route circling the country
and travelling out to Crete.
The Greek relay starts in Olympia and finishes in Athens, taking in Crete
Greece has seen huge demonstrations of social unrest in
previous months, sparked by financial chaos and efforts to reach a deal
with the European Union on a bail-out for the Greek economy.
Talks to try to form a new government have been ongoing after elections on Sunday failed to produce a conclusive result.
Several international companies including BMW have stepped in to help fund the torch's journey.
The Greek section of the 2012 torch relay ends at the
Panathenaic Stadium, Athens, on Thursday 17 May, where the flame is
handed over to London Olympic Games organisers.
The stadium hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.
The last torchbearers in Greece will be Greek weightlifter
Pyrros Dimas and Chinese gymnast Li Ning - who lit the cauldron at the
Beijing 2008 opening ceremony.
The 2008 Olympic torch relay, which travelled the globe, was dogged by pro-Tibet, democracy and anti-China protests.
The 2012 flame will travel straight from Greece to the UK on
18 May, flying into the Royal Navy airbase at Culdrose, near Helston in
Cornwall.
The UK torch relay begins at Land's End the following morning
when three times Olympic gold medal-winning sailor Ben Ainslie will be
the first to carry the torch on British soil.
He wrote in the Daily Telegraph: "It is a privilege for me to
be asked but, more than anything, it is an exciting moment for the
country.
"The arrival of the torch on home soil really brings home how close the Games are."
Carried by 8,000 torchbearers, the Barber Osgerby-designed torch will cover 8,000 miles across all of the country's nations and regions.
It is due to reach the Olympic Stadium in Stratford on 27
July to light the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
For the ancient Greeks, fire was a divine element believed to have been stolen from the Gods.
A flame was first lit at the modern Olympics
at the Amsterdam 1928 summer games, but it was not until Berlin 1936
that a torch relay route was set out from Greece to Germany.
Viewers in the UK can see live coverage of the torch lighting ceremony on the BBC News Channel, BBC Radio 5 Live and www.bbc.co.uk/2012/ on Thursday morning.
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