[MSN] Greek officials race to repair fire damage at Ancient Olympia for Beijing flame-lighting.

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Greek officials race to repair fire damage at Ancient Olympia for Beijing
flame-lighting 

The Associated Press 
Tuesday, September 4, 2007 
ATHENS, Greece: After battling to extinguish the worst wildfires on record,
Greek officials are battling to light a new fire - the Olympic flame that
will be carried from the birthplace of the ancient games to Beijing for next
year's Olympics.

Nine days after the worst wildfires on record obliterated forests around the
birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games, scorching 2,500-year-old stone
blocks, Greek officials are racing to patch up the damage by March 25 - date
of the flame-lighting ceremony for the Beijing Olympics.

Culture Minister George Voulgarakis said Tuesday everything would be ready
in time for the ritual, held at the World Heritage site before every
Olympics since the 1936 Berlin Games.

"I believe we will meet the crucial deadline for the lighting of the Olympic
Flame," he said. "We will exhaust all the means at our disposal and all our
options to restore the landscape at Ancient Olympia as soon as possible -
and above all to protect the area from flooding."

In a carefully orchestrated ceremony beside the Temple of Hera, an actress
in the white gown and sandals of an ancient high priestess lights the
Olympic flame using a concave mirror to focus the sun's heat on a silver
torch.

Voulgarakis said work was under way inside the site to clear charred
vegetation and conserve damaged architectural fragments - which were kept in
a storage shed that burnt down.

Olympia's rich archaeological museum and ancient monuments, which include
ruined temples, a gymnasium, hostels and bathhouses, survived unscathed. But
the fire burnt trees in the site, some 320 kilometers (200 miles) southwest
of Athens, singed the earth banks of the stadium where the ancient Games
were held and obliterated swathes of forest surrounding the once-lush site.

Experts say the trees will take decades to grow back.

"Anyone who saw the extent of the devastation could only be shocked,"
Voulgarakis said in an interview with Athens 9.84 radio.

At least 65 people died in a spate of wildfires that swept through southern
Greece from Aug. 24 to Sept. 3.

At Olympia, the flames also swept through the adjacent grounds of the
International Olympic Academy, leaving buildings untouched but destroying
swathes of trees - including the cypress-ringed grove where the heart of
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, is buried.

Hellenic Olympic Committee spokesman Tasos Papachristou said the marble
monument enshrining Coubertin's heart was lightly scorched, but the
surrounding trees were burnt.

"It's definitely not a beautiful sight right now. but efforts are under way
to repair the damage," Papachristou said, adding that experts were assessing
the destruction.

"We are now at the stage of reorganization," he told The Associated Press.
"I don't think the damage will prevent the ceremony from taking place."

The Olympics were the most important sporting festival in ancient Greece,
held every four years from 776 B.C. While the games lasted, Greece's
perennially warring city-states observed a sacred truce.

After Christianity was established, Roman emperor Theodosius abolished the
games in A.D. 394, deeming them pagan. The site once again hosted an Olympic
event 1,610 years later, when the shot-put contest for the Athens 2004 Games
was held in the ancient stadium.

http://www.iht.com/