It will start at the Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens, seen here, built around 330BC and gloriously reconstructed for the first modern Games in 1896, thanks to a wealthy Athenian benefactor. On 30 March, the 2,300-year-old stadium will witness the passing of the flaming Olympic baton from the Greeks to the Chinese.

The flame will then take a 137,000km journey through every continent except Antarctica over a period of four months.

The torch is scheduled to pass through London on 6 April, San Francisco (9 April), Buenos Aires (11 April) and Canberra (24 April), before reaching Hong Kong on 2 May at the start of a tour of China and Tibet. The highlight — literally — will be an attempt to take the flame to the summit of Mount Everest: a second torch will be left with a group of mountaineers who are planning an ascent in May.

Is Beijing ready for the games?

In contrast to Athens 2004, whose Olympic building program only just met the deadline, the Chinese capital is well ahead of schedule. In fact, some of the 15 new venues were completed more than a year ago, prompting the IOC President Jacques Rogge to urge the organising committee to slow the work down.

The main stadium is not yet quite finished. It will be and the opening ceremony will start at 08:08:08pm on 08-08-08. In Chinese numerology you cannt get much luckier than that.

The airport has a new, third terminal to cope with the Olympic traffic, and Beijing’s metro is being almost trebled in size, with seven new lines and 90 new stations.

For your information the headquarters of the Olympic movement is in a city that has never staged the Games, and is never likely to.

Baron de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in Paris in 1894, but it moved to Lausanne after the First World War because of Switzerland’s neutrality. Which will almost certainly never see an Olympic Games. It matters not.

Beijing will do all the shining and glory the Olympics will ever need. Read the long, exhaustive and superbly researched story by clicking on Source.
Source: The Independent