Rehearsal for lighting flame for Youth Olympics successful
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A successful official rehearsal for the Lighting of the Olympic Flame for the first ever Youth Olympic Games was held on Thursday in Olympia.
Among the ruins of the ancient stadium where the first Olympic Games were organized 23 centuries ago, Ino Menegaki, an actress of the Greek National Theatre playing the role of the High Priestess lit a torch with the sun' s rays using a concave mirror.
Approximately 1,500 Greeks and foreign visitors attended the rehearsal ceremony which ended when she handed the torch with the Olympic Flame over to the first torchbearer Apostolos Koutavas.
Koutavas, a 15-year-old Greek trampoline athlete, won a gold medal at the 2010 Junior European Championship in trampoline that qualified him for the Youth Olympic Games. He will pass the Flame to Xiang Qi Amanda Lim from Singapore.
The first Youth Olympics will be held in Singapore from August 14 to August 26 this summer.
The official Lighting Ceremony of the Olympic Flame for the Singapore Games will be held on July 23 in Ancient Olympia in the presence of the International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge.
The head of the Organizing Committee of the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics, Ser Miang Ng, representatives of the Greek government will also attend the official ceremony, as well as famous former athletes, such as Sergey Bubka and Yelena Isinbayeva, who are ambassadors of the Singapore Youth Olympics.
In case of clouds that will block the lighting of the Olympic torch during Friday' s ceremony, the flame lit on Thursday will be used.
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