OLYMPIA, Greece -- The Olympic torch relay began Thursday in Ancient Olympia, western Greece, beginning the flame's journey to the 2020 Games' opening ceremony on July 24 at the National Stadium in Tokyo.
The 2004 Athens Olympics women's marathon gold medalist Mizuki Noguchi, 41, was the second torchbearer and also the first Japanese runner in the relay.
At the Olympic flame lighting ceremony prior to the relay, women in ancient attire representing priestesses ignited the torch using sun rays reflected from a parabolic mirror in the Temple of Hera at the ruins of Olympia.
The relay started at the Ancient Olympia Stadium, which is adjacent to the temple.The 2016 Rio de Janeiro shooting gold medalist Anna Korakaki took over the flame and started running. Korakaki, 23, will participate in the Tokyo Olympics as a member of the Greek national team.
Noguchi, the second runner, said that it was her first visit to Greece since the 2004 Olympics and she had been jogging to get ready for the relay.
"As an Olympic medalist, I thought I shouldn't run poorly," Noguchi said.
She ran a distance of about 200 meters on the street near the ancient stadium, while holding the torch high up with a smile.
"I was reflecting on my revisit to the birthplace of the Olympic Games, while feeling expectation and hope for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. I was more nervous this time than I was in Athens [for the Games], so I'd never forget this run," Noguchi said afterward.
The spread of novel coronavirus led to the ceremony being held unprecedentedly with no spectators. The number of participants in the ceremony was reduced from the planned 1,000 to about 100 and was held in a quiet atmosphere.
The torch relay arrives at Athens on Wednesday. On Thursday, Tadahiro Nomura, the first judoka to win three consecutive gold Olympic medals, and Saori Yoshida, a wrestler with three Olympic golds, will represent Japan as torchbearers at Panathenaic Stadium, the venue of the first modern Olympics in 1896. The torch then will fly to Japan with Nomura and Yoshida.
In Japan, the relay will start in Fukushima Prefecture on March 26, and about 10,000 people will run across the country over 121 days.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
