BBC Sport: Olympics blog

Beijing

It is quite literally the burning issue: how will they light the Olympic cauldron tonight?

It's always the key moment of any opening ceremony (check out our photo gallery of ceremonies from years gone by here) - the one detail they keep totally hush-hush until the night itself, the iconic image designed to be remembered for years to come.

Back in the day, it was all so charmingly simple.

At the 1948 London Olympics, athlete John Mark simply jogged up to the cauldron and shoved the Olympic torch in. Whoosh. Bingo.

By Montreal in 1976, things were still relatively prosaic.

Two Canadian teenagers - one French speaker, one English speaker - did the job, the most memorable aspect being the incredible bubble perm/wafro that young Stephane Prefontaine was sporting at the time.

Those Montreal Olympics - so low-tech that, when a rainstorm put out the Olympic flame, an official re-lit it with his cigarette lighter - now seem almost laughably downbeat.

These days, the spirit of Leni Riefenstahl stalks Olympic stadiums once again.

It has to be bold. It has to be daring. It has to trump anything we've ever seen before.

Cast your mind back to the Games of 1988. Three torch-bearers were carried skywards on a gleaming white disk, higher and higher into the Seoul sky, like astronauts ascending into the belly of a spaceship.

It was incredible to watch - particularly for the doves who had perched on the cauldron's lip after being released into the stadium earlier.

As the flames rose up, the scorched bodies of dove after dove plunged hundreds of feet to the ground. Never before has a television director jumped so quickly to a long-shot.

By Barcelona four years later, lessons had been learned.

Back-up plans had been put in place - which was just as well, since the burning arrow fired the length of the stadium by Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo clearly over-shot the cauldron by some distance, sailing clean out of the stadium and into the streets beyond.

Not that you would have noticed, watching on TV. Spookily, the cauldron blazed into life regardless.

In Atlanta in '96, organisers provided an unusual twist by producing the highlight of the entire Olympics before the Games had even officially started.

When Muhammad Ali stepped out of the darkness to take the torch off the last relay runner, there was barely a dry eye in the house.

No matter that the pulley-system designed to carry the flame up to the cauldron then moved as jerkily as a backstage curtain at a village hall. The spell had already been cast.

Sydney 2000 saw Cathy Freeman dressed like a sacred alien, walking on water and setting light to a ring of fire that rose around her and wobbled slowly up a precipitous slope to a silver pedestal high above.

And Athens?

With the supposed final torch-bearer, Kostas Kenteris, a late pull-out after apparently falling off a motorcycle that was never seen again, it was left to windsurfer Nikolaos Kaklamanakis to stand unblinking as a giant needle descended from the heavens to an inch in front of his face and sucked the flame upwards.

This time around, rumours have been sweeping the city for days.

You might think that having Sarah Brightman singing live at the ceremony would be enough in itself.

After all, no man-made construction can ever hope to equal the awe-inspiring wonder that was Brightman's hair/teeth combo during her late-1980s peak.

Still - incredible though it may sound, there is more.

Some have their money on something to do a traditional Chinese kite. Others are certain a terracotta warrior will have a part to play.

Some wags, with a nod to how many websites are still near-impossible to access from China, reckon a great firewall could do the job.

Personally, I'm backing the idea of a dragon being involved somehow. There's been no mention of one appearing in any other part of the ceremony, and the fire-breathing aspect ties in beautifully.

You read it here first. But don't blame me if it ends up featuring Monkey tennis...