The world watched for an agonising four minutes as the Olympic cauldron became stuck on its way to the top of the stadium, but few knew just how close the 'sacred flame' had come to being snuffed out.
The world was watching when Cathy Freeman lit the Olympic flame during the Sydney 2000 opening ceremony — but the historic moment was close to being a humiliating failure.Twenty years after the ceremony, the former NSW Minister for the Olympics feels comfortable laughing about the moment that came so close to disaster.
But few know that delay almost led to the 'sacred flame', which had travelled all the way from Olympia in Greece, snuffing out as more than two billion people watched. "The cauldron ran off bottled gas and it had a limited life expectancy while it was on bottled gas," Mr Knight told the ABC.The night before the ceremony, secret rehearsals were underway to make sure the show went off without a hitch.
After the initial glitch, the cauldron was able to travel up to the top of the stadium where it burned for the remainder of the Games.
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