Who put the Olympic flame out?
Only weather has previously succeeded in snuffing out the Olympic flame, just twice in its history. Today French officials managed it three times. According to Olympic legend, the flame is ignited by the sun’s rays on the ancient site of Olympia in Greece. Hundreds of sportsmen and politicians then pass a torch carrying the symbolic flame across the world before lighting a cauldron in the host stadium. “The Olympic flame represents the positive values that Man has always associated with fire,” the International Olympic Committee grandly boasts. “[It] transmits a message of peace and friendship amongst peoples.” Today that flame was extinguished for “technical reasons”. Its minders were forced to retreat into a bus as protesters, angry at China’s human rights record, swarmed around the totem, which is en route to Beijing.
