BEIJING — The Olympic flame approached the final destination of its long and sometimes contentious global tour today, greeted by rapturous crowds in the Chinese capital two days before it officially launches the Summer Games.
The arrival of the torch marks one of the final steps in China’s seven years of preparations for the Games that have cost billions of dollars.
The torch will tour Beijing before ending up at Friday’s opening ceremony for the Games. It will be carried by a diverse group, including China’s first astronaut in space, Yang Liwei, movie director Zhang Yimou and basketball star Yao Ming.
“I’m very happy to be here,” Yang said before the relay kicked off from the Forbidden City, home of Chinese emperors since the 15th century. “That the torch is finally in Beijing is a realization of a dream we’ve had for a hundred years.”
Footnotes. The beating of two Japanese journalists by police in western China drew an official apology Tuesday, even as Beijing set new obstacles for news outlets wanting to report from Tiananmen Square. The International Olympic Committee, which last week only partially succeeded in getting China to unblock some Internet sites after journalists raised a furor, said it would look into the new rules that require reporters to make appointments to do reports at Tiananmen.
• Former Olympic speedskater Joey Cheek had his visa revoked by Chinese authorities today, hours before he was set to travel to Beijing to urge the Chinese government to help make peace in the war-torn Darfur section of Sudan.
The Associated Press
