Paris Olympic Relay Interrupted, Torch Put On Bus

The relay had got just 200 meters from its starting point at the Eiffel Tower when it was put on the bus on the banks of the River Seine.

People were lying down on the road on the route the flame was due to take, journalists said.

Source: DDNEWS

History of Olympic Torch from Wikipedia

The Olympic Flame from the ancient games was reintroduced during the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 1928, the flame burnt in the Marathon Tower of the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam.

The modern convention of moving the Olympic Flame via a relay system from Olympia to the Olympic venue began with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Although most of the time the torch with the Olympic Flame is still carried by runners, it has been transported in many different ways. The fire travelled by boat in 1948 to cross the English Channel, and it was first transported by aeroplane in 1952, when the fire travelled to Helsinki. In 1956, the equestrian events were held separately because of strict quarantine regulations in Australia. All carriers in the torch relay to Stockholm, where these events were held instead, travelled on horseback.

Remarkable means of transportation were used in 1976, when the flame was transformed to a radio signal. From Athens, this signal was carried by satellite to Canada[2], where it was received and used to trigger a laser beam to re-light the flame. In 2000, the torch was carried under water by divers near the Great Barrier Reef. Other unique means of transportation include a Native American canoe, a camel, and Concorde. In 2004, the first global torch relay was undertaken, a journey that lasted 78 days. The Olympic flame covered a distance of more than 78,000 km in the hands of some 11,300 torchbearers, travelling to Africa and South America for the first time, visiting all previous Olympic cities and finally returning to Athens for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

When the Olympic flame came to the Panathinaiko Stadium, stadium of the 2004 Summer Olympics, to start the global torch relay, the night was very windy and the torch, lit by the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, blew out due to the wind, but was re-lit from the back up flame taken from the original ceremonial flame at Olympia. This was the second time that the Olympic torch flame was put out.

The first occurred at the 1976 Summer Olympics held in Montreal, Canada. After a rainstorm that doused the Olympic flame a few days after the games had opened, an official relit the flame using his cigarette lighter. Organizers quickly doused it again and relit it using a backup of the original flame.

In 2008 the Olympic flame has been extinguished by officials during escalating protests in Paris.

Another means of catching attention has been the lighting of the fire in the stadium. At the 1992 Barcelona Games, Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo shot a burning arrow over the cauldron from a platform at the opposite end of the stadium. Two years later, the Olympic fire was brought into the stadium of Lillehammer by a ski jumper.