The torch of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games will arrive in Beijing, the venue of the 2008 Games, on June 8 next year, Athens Olympic organizers announced Wednesday at the official launch of its torch relay plan.

This will be the first time for the Olympic flame to visit China. The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) expressed its welcome shortly after the announcement.

In a positive response, BOCOG spokesman Sun Weijia remarked that the passage of the Olympic flame across the globe including Beijing, will be a perfect way to promote the Olympic spirit worldwide.

"Beijing is anticipating and will warmly welcome the arrival of the Olympic flame from Athens.

"This will enable Beijing citizens to feel and experience the Olympic spirit at first hand several years before Beijing hosts the Olympic Games," added Sun, who is also deputy director of BOCOG's Media and Communications department.

The Athens 2004 Olympic torch will be carried to 33 cities during June and July next year as it journeys across the five continents represented by the Olympic rings, after being lit in ancient Olympia in Greece, the birthplace of the Olympic Movement.

After its international journey, the relay will go on across Greece from July to August. Beijing is the fifth stop and the holy flame will stay in the capital city for two days.

The flame will also visit Africa and South America for the first time in Olympic history.

At a special ceremony held in Athens, attended by Dr. Jacques Rogge, the IOC President, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, president of the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, said, "The passage of the Olympic torch through Beijing reminds us that the people of Athens and Beijing share the same Olympic ideals: a desire for peace; a need for participation."

The Olympic torch relay became a widely-watched part of Olympic Games after it was reinitiated in modern Olympic Games during the 1928 Amsterdam Games.

Now every Olympic organizer pays special attention to how to stage a unique relay.

(China Daily November 27, 2003)