Flame for Winter Games lit in Olympia

priestess dances next to the Olympic flame during the lighting ceremony for the 2006 Turin Winter Games in the Pierre de Coubertin Grove in Ancient Olympia, Greece, Sunday. ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece — The curse of the Winter Olympics struck again, with heavy clouds over the birthplace of the ancient games frustrating efforts Sunday to light the flame for Turin using the sun’s rays.

Bad weather also disrupted the ceremony for the Sydney 2000 Summer Games, as well as the past two Winter Olympics — in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Nagano in 1998.

Officials had to make do with a backup flame lit during Saturday’s rehearsal beside the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera in this lush, riverside sanctuary in the western Peloponnese. Greek soap opera actress Theodora Siarkou, in the white gown and sandals of an ancient high priestess, lit that backup flame by using a concave mirror to focus the sun’s heat on a silver torch — after praying to the ancient sun god, Apollo.

In a cypress tree-ringed clearing where the heart of modern Olympics founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin is buried, Siarkou handed the flame Sunday to the first in a chain of more than 10,500 torchbearers. The 8,300-mile relay through Greece and Italy — with forays into France, Austria, Switzerland and Slovenia — ends at the Turin Olympic Stadium for the Feb. 10 opening ceremony.

‘‘We are confident ... the Torino 2006 torch relay will be remembered as one of the most fascinating ever organized,’’ said Turin organizing chief Valentino Castellani. ‘‘We have combined our efforts to realize high-standard Games ... which will reflect the warmth of the Italian people.’’

Attending officials Sunday did not include representatives of the Orthodox Church of Greece, which frowns on the ceremony’s flirtation with pagan ritual.

‘‘The church objects to the invocation of a nonexistent god, Apollo,’’ spokesman Father Pavlos Ioannou said. ‘‘We have no objection to the rest of the ceremony.’’

But Siarkou said the ceremony is symbolic.

‘‘I don’t believe in the 12 gods of ancient Greece, I am an Orthodox Christian,’’ she said. ‘‘Effectively, the invocation is a call on a higher power — whether you want to name it God, Christ, Apollo, Zeus, Buddha or Allah — that inspires and moves humankind to improve itself.’’

The first torchbearer, 19year-old Greek pole vaulter Costas Filippidis, set off with the flame toward a road still bearing the fading logo of the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.