New International Olympic Committee chief Kirsty Coventry fought back tears on Wednesday as she urged nations to come together in the 2026 Winter Games, as the torch relay set off from ancient Olympia in Greece.
Addressing guests during the torch ceremony at the Olympia archaeological museum, as the first woman to head the Olympic movement, a tearful Coventry stressed the power of sport to unite.
“I wasn’t supposed to get emotional, but this place is very special,” she added to applause.
“In a divided world that we live in today, the Games hold a truly symbolic place. It is our duty, our responsibility, to ensure that the athletes from around the world can come together peacefully,” she said.
Coventry repeatedly veered from her prepared speech to stress her emotional connection to the Games.
The torch was carried initially by Greek rower Petros Gaidatzis and then jointly with Italian cross-country skiing champion Stefania Belmondo as the relay began the countdown to the Milan-Cortina Winter Games, which will open on February 6.
The pair ran from the museum to the grove in Olympia, the birthplace of the ancient Games, where the heart of modern Olympics founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin is kept, and handed over the torch to Italian luge great Armin Zoeggeler.
The flame ceremony was flanked by sculptures from the Temple of Zeus, the patron god of the ancient Olympics.
The ceremony to light the Olympic flame is usually held among the ruins of the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera, near the stadium where the Olympics were born in 776 BC.
But a rainy weather forecast — which proved mistaken — raised concerns that the sun’s rays would not be able to sufficiently heat up the parabolic mirror used by actresses dressed as ancient priestesses to light the flame.
That forced organisers to head indoors for Wednesday’s ceremony where they used a flame lit on Monday, during an outdoor rehearsal under the sun.
Following a December 4 handover ceremony at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, where the first modern Olympics were revived in 1896, the flame will head to Rome for a 63-day, 12,000-kilometre (7,500-mile) course through Italy’s major cities and the archaeological site of Pompeii.