Olympic Flame

Greek Olympic and world champion Anna Korakaki will run the first part of the relay following the torch-lighting ceremony for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and will also be the first woman to hold that honor. The 23-year-old shooter will receive the Olympic flame from the High Priestess in a ceremony to be held on March 12 at Ancient Olympia. [Reuters]

The Olympic Flame for the Tokyo 2020 Games will be lit on March 12 at Ancient Olympia, the organizing committee of the Tokyo Olympics announced on Monday.

An official cleans the parabolic mirror during a ceremony on Wednesday at the capital's Zappeion Hall to light the Olympic flame ahead of the Abu Dhabi Special Olympics, which start on March 14. After the ceremony, a torch relay was to take the flame to the Abu Dhabi Embassy via a series of historic and cultural landmarks.

The Panathenaic Stadium, the venue of the first modern Olympics in 1896, in central Athens, received a record number of visitors in 2017, the Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) said on Thursday.

A total of 223,471 people, including 100,041 young pupils and students, visited the site, which is managed by HOC and is one of Athens's most popular tourist attractions and landmarks.

Greek actress Katerina Lehou, in the role of the High Priestess, lights a torch during a ceremony for the handover of the Olympic flame at the Panathenaic Stadium (Kallimarmaro) in Athens Tuesday.

Greek actress Katerina Lechou, in the role of the High Priestess, lights a torch with the Olympic flame during the handover ceremony of the Olympic flame at the Panathenaic Stadium, in Athens, Tuesday. The PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics will be held from 9 until 25 February 2018. [Reuters]

The Olympic flame was handed to organizers of the 2018 Pyeongchang Games on Tuesday, and it will now head off on a 100-day journey across South Korea before the opening ceremony on February 9.

Commuters were in for a headache in downtown Athens on Tuesday as the Olympic Torch relay was leading to the closure of key streets in the city center.

The countdown to the 23rd Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 has officially begun, as the lighting ceremony of the Olympic flame, which took place at Ancient Olympia in the Peloponnese came to its conclusion on October 24.

Actresses playing priestesses perform the final dress rehearsal for the lighting of the Olympic Flame at Ancient Olympia, southwestern Greece on Monday. The torch, which was lit on the third attempt due to cloudy weather, will serve as a backup if the sky during Tuesday's ceremony is overcast, as forecast.