To mark 100 days from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Nine.com.au asked you what your favourite Olympic memories were in a survey. The response was overwhelming! We chose 50 of them to re-live, one a day, before new memories are made in Paris. Scroll on for today’s memory.
One of the most ambitious plans and iconic moments in Olympic history came to fruition in Barcelona in 1992.
Standing on the platform at the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Games, a Spanish archer by the name of Antonio Rebollo held his arrow aloft and retrieved the Olympic flame from another Spaniard, basketballer Juan Antonio San Epifanio. Rebollo, dressed in white pants and a white top, and materialising in a dim, hazy setting, pulled his arrow back, steadied himself and sent the arrow flying through the Barcelona sky.
Rebollo nailed it. The flaming arrow soared some 70 metres and sailed over the Olympic cauldron at exactly the right spot, travelling through the gas being projected from a jet. A huge flame exploded, and during the 16 days of the Barcelona Games, the flame burned in the cauldron.
Watch the video at the top of the page to see the amazing moment an archer lit the Olympic cauldron at the Barcelona 1992 Games!
Rebollo attracted polio at the age of eight and, after taking up archery in his early 20s, competed at three Paralympic Games.
“There were no fears,” the Madrid-born archer said of lighting the cauldron.
“I was practically a robot. I focused on my positioning and reaching the target. That was all.
“My feelings were taken from the people who described to me how they saw it: what they felt, their emotions, their cries. This is what made me realise what the moment actually meant.”
Rebollo had brought along a second arrow, having received a promise from organisers that he could have another go if his shot missed. After nailing 698 of 700 practice shots, he nailed the one that counted.
“My very first emotion was one of satisfaction,” Rebollo said.
“I knew so many people had worked so hard. If the flaming arrow went wrong, the whole ceremony would have been highly criticised, rightly so. I was very happy to see everybody relaxed.”
He was later hailed as the world’s second-best archer, behind Robin Hood.
Bent and charred, Rebollo’s arrow was found outside the Olympic stadium.
It now lives in the Olympic museum in the Swiss city of Lausanne.