San Francisco Frontiers - Fire and fury: the Olympic torch relay

Along the way it has had its fair share of mishaps.

As Paris prepares to unveil the route for the 2024 torch relay, AFP looks back at some of the headline moments of the event, first run ahead of the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

- Flaming underpants -

One of the most memorable stunts during the torch relay came in 1956 ahead of the Melbourne Games when an Australian student named Barry Larkin fooled crowds with a homemade torch topped by burning underpants.

Larkin managed to get his torch -- a wooden chair leg crowned with a metal pudding container holding the fiery underwear -- up the stairs of Sydney's Town Hall and deliver it to city mayor Pat Hills, cheered on by tens of thousands.

The university student even arranged his own fake motorcycle escort but genuine police outriders soon caught up with him.

- Runaway jaguar -

A 17-year-old jaguar named Juma was paraded in chains for photos as the torch passed through the Amazon in northern Brazil ahead of the Rio Games in 2016.

But Juma escaped its handlers and four tranquilliser darts failed to slow it down.

After it threatened a vet, soldiers opened fire on the jaguar and shot dead the animal, a symbol of the Amazon.

- Cauldron calamity -

The climax of the relay -- the lighting of the Olympic cauldron -- has provided some memorable moments such as Muhammad Ali trembling due to suffering from Parkinson's disease, and an archer's blazing arrow in Barcelona.

But things have not always gone smoothly. The most grisly blunder came in Seoul in 1988 when dozens of doves released earlier in the opening ceremony alighted on the cauldron.

When the flame was lit, several of the birds were incinerated, to the horror of watching spectators.

- Heated protests -

The torch relay has been the target of several protests, most notably during the run-up to Beijing 2008 as demonstrators took China to task over its Tibet policy.

Protests started as soon as the flame was lit in ancient Olympia and dogged the relay throughout its journey to China, notably as it passed through London, Paris and San Francisco.

In Japan, monks at an ancient Buddhist temple pulled out of hosting a torch ceremony because of the Chinese crackdown in Tibet.

- No cheering, please -

Overseas fans were barred from Tokyo 2020 to limit the risk of Covid-19 infection when the Games finally got underway in 2021 after a year's delay.

The torch relay set the tone for the subdued games, with public sections of the relay scrapped in areas where virus cases were spiking, including the final leg in Japan's capital.

In areas where masked spectators were allowed to gather, they were under strict instructions not to shout or cheer, for fear of spreading the virus through their saliva.

The honour of lighting the cauldron in an eerily empty Tokyo stadium fell to tennis star Naomi Osaka.

H.Davis--SFF