Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games: Final leg of torch relay begins
- Published
Azusa Iwashimizu, a member of Japan women's football national team, lit the torch from the celebration cauldron at the start of the procession in J Village in Naraha, Fukushima, Japan.
Usually a big event, the lighting ceremony was done without crowds this time. The torch relay is 121 days long and it will spend three days in the areas hit hardest by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 - Fukushima, Iwate, and Miyagi.
Azusa Iwashimizu passed the Olympic flame to high school student Asato Owada at a torch 'kiss point' during the relay. The torch will also spend three days in four other areas hosting multiple competitions during the 23 July-8 August Tokyo Games in 2021 - Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama and Shizuoka.
No international fans will be allowed at the Tokyo Games. Due to the Covid pandemic, organisers have discouraged large crowds along the route, and those who did come to watch were asked to wear masks, socially distance and avoid cheering or shouting.
Runners will each carry the cherry blossom-motif torch over a distance of about 200 metres. Tokyo will host the torch the longest for 15 days. The remaining 39 areas of Japan will have it for two days each.
Seiko Hashimoto, the head of the Games’ organising committee, said the start of the flame’s journey was a sign of hope. “For the past year, as the entire world went through a difficult period, the Olympic flame was kept alive quietly but powerfully,” she said. “The small flame did not lose hope, and just like the cherry blossom buds that are ready to bloom, it was waiting for this day.”
To mark the 10 year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, torchbearers ran through abandoned streets in Naraha – one of several communities that were evacuated. In 2011 a tsunami hit a nearby nuclear plant and caused dangerous radiation to leak out.
Here a torchbearer poses with Naraha town mascot Yuzutaro after running his leg of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic torch relay.
The Olympic flame was lit in Greece on 12 March 2020, also at a ceremony held without spectators. And although this relay was scaled back that didn't stop some people getting into traditional costume.