The countdown for the Beijing Olympic Games 2008 began with the lit of Olympic torch in a ceremony on Monday in ancient Olympia, Greece, which will be carried to the host city of Beijing.
The ceremonial event marks the opening of five-month domestic and international torch relay, which will meet its fate on August 08 with the opening of the Games’ ceremony.
The torch was primarily lit by Greek actress Maria Nafpliotou, portraying as the High Priestess, who used a break in the clouds by focussing the sun’s ray on a concave steel mirror at the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia.
Alexandros Nikolaidis, a Greek athlete who won a silver medal in taekwondo (a Korean martial art and combat sport) at the 2004 Olympic Games will carry the torch for the first mile. The flame will further carried out ahead by Luo Xuejuan, China's Olympic swimming gold medallist.
The Olympic torch will reach finally in Athens, through the hands of another 603 holders on March 30, where it will be handed over to China to take to Beijing. This way the torch will complete its 130-day journey covering almost 13,700 km (85,000 miles) in reaching from Greece to Beijing, where the Olympic Games will begin in August.
The torch will move all-important cities around the world through April after it reaches Beijing at a ceremonial arrival on March 30. From the starting of May the flame will march at least 111 Chinese cities for the next three-month.
In a side trip in May, a separate torch relay will be carried to the top of Mt. Everest, the world's highest peak, along the Tibet-Nepal border.
However, it is in the month of June, when the flame will be carried through Tibet and three other neighboring provinces, which violence erupted this month. However, China says it will impose strict security on the Olympic Games torch relay through Tibet to Mount Everest.
The protests embarked on in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on March 10 to mark the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against China's rule of Tibet.
The flame is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on August 6, where it will be showed off around the city until entering the stadium for the Olympics opening ceremony on Aug 08.
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