How was the cauldron lit at the barcelona olympic games

Others thought it ineffably funny. As in any stage show, no matter how well rehearsed, things can, of course, go spectacularly wrong. The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics witnessed young Korean athletes being lifted on a steel ring around a pole towards a high-perched cauldron.

Earlier, doves had been released above the new Jasmil Olympic Stadium. They chose to settle on the rim of the cauldron. When the flame was lit, a dozen doves were barbecued in front of millions of television viewers worldwide. Horrific though this was, Olympic organisers have shown little restraint since Seoul. In , the cauldron of the Barcelona summer games was lit, or so it seemed, by a flaming arrow shot by the Paralympic archer Antonio Robello.

In fact, the cauldron was lit at the press of a button. Or was it a fish held upside down? Once there, Li ran as if on air over and around what appeared to be a giant Chinese scroll leading to the base of a towering cauldron that, dutifully, burst into flames. The actress then uses the flame created by the sun to light the torch of the first bearer, usually a Greek athlete of note, for the start of the relay Credit: Getty Images.

How could the organisers of the London Olympics beat this? The first Olympic cauldron of the modern games appeared at the Summer Olympics in Amsterdam in — it appeared at the top of a tower Credit: Getty Images. The result was an Olympic cauldron unlike any other. Two hundred and four copper plates shaped like petals, one for each of the competing nations, rose from the horizontal when the flame was lit by seven young athletes to form a stylised burning bush low down in the London stadium.

Although complex, the Heatherwick cauldron resolved into a haunting, elemental spectacle capturing something of the near sacred spirit of the Olympic flame as it had first been imagined. The Olympic Games, held in Olympia, Greece, from the8th Century BC to the 4th Century AD, were revived in when the opening ceremony was held in the Panathenaic Stadium, Athens, newly renovated by the architect Anastasios Metaxas, who, trained in Dresden, went on to win silver and bronze Olympic medals for shooting.

Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Olympic Cauldron. Edit source History Talk 0. Gallery [ ]. Antonio Rebollo, a Spanish Paralympian, was chosen out of a field of archers to be the one to shoot the arrow.

Standing in the middle of the packed stadium, Rebollo took a flame on the tip of his arrow from Spanish basketball player Juan Antonio San Epifanio and aimed the arrow toward the cauldron at the top of the stadium.

Rebollo flung the arrow on a perfect line with the cauldron, which had gas lines in it to help ignite the flame once it flew past. If the arrow was too high or low, it would have missed the gas line. The arrow landed harmlessly outside of the stadium, the cauldron was lit, and Rebollo became a legend for his calmness under indescribable pressure. Rebollo said to paralympic. The following day, I started to realize what I had done, because I was called from many TV shows and everybody congratulated me in the streets.

To look at cauldron lightings from every Summer Olympics on YouTube, click or tap here. What was your favorite Olympic cauldron lighting? Was it one not on this list? Let us know in the comments below.