Inspiring Stories
The Women Who Carried the Olympic Flame
Enriqueta Basilio, Cathy Freeman and the women who lit the cauldron
February 6, 20264 min read
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Mexico City, October 12, 1968
For the first 32 years of the modern torch relay, the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron went exclusively to men. That ended on October 12, 1968, when a 20-year-old hurdler from Mexicali named Enriqueta Basilio took the torch into the Estadio Olimpico in Mexico City.
She was a national champion and record holder in the 80 meter hurdles, a working athlete from Baja California who competed for Mexico on the track at those same Games. She ran up the stadium's long staircase with the torch held high, turned to the crowd, and lit the cauldron.
Sydney, September 15, 2000
Thirty-two years later, Sydney built its opening ceremony finale around women. The year 2000 marked a century since women first competed at the Olympic Games, and the final torchbearers were a relay of Australia's greatest women Olympians.
Betty Cuthbert, the "Golden Girl" of the 1956 Melbourne Games, brought the torch into the stadium in a wheelchair, her movement taken by multiple sclerosis, pushed by fellow sprinter Raelene Boyle. Then Dawn Fraser, Shirley Strickland, Shane Gould, and Debbie Flintoff-King carried it onward in turn.
The last handoff went to Cathy Freeman, the Aboriginal sprinter. Standing in a shallow pool, she swept her torch across the water and a ring of fire ignited around her, a submerged cauldron rising out of the pond with Freeman at its center.
Then it stalled. A technical fault froze the rising cauldron for roughly four minutes while Freeman stood surrounded by fire and water in front of the world. She stood still and waited. The cauldron resumed its climb, and ten nights later Freeman won the 400 meters in the same stadium, one of the most anticipated gold medals ever run.
Between and Since
In 1976, Austrian skier Christl Haas became the first woman to light a Winter Olympic cauldron, at the Innsbruck Games. In 1984, Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Jesse Owens, ran the very first kilometer of the Los Angeles relay in New York City alongside Bill Thorpe Jr., grandson of Jim Thorpe, then carried the torch into the Coliseum on opening night and handed it to Rafer Johnson. In 1998, figure skater Midori Ito lit the cauldron in Nagano dressed in a kimono evoking the sun goddess Amaterasu.
In Paris in 2024, sprint great Marie-José Pérec shared the final lighting with judoka Teddy Riner as the cauldron rose over the city beneath a balloon. And in February 2026, alpine skier Sofia Goggia lit one of the two cauldrons at the Milano Cortina Winter Games, in the mountain town of Cortina d'Ampezzo.
Basilio was a competing athlete when she climbed her staircase. Freeman stood in the fire ten nights before the biggest race of her life. Neither was a retired great making an honorary appearance. Both were trusted with the flame while their own Games were still ahead of them, and both delivered.
Basilio later served on the Mexican Olympic Committee, and when the Athens torch relay passed through Mexico City in 2004, she carried it again, 36 years after her staircase.
What was an exception in 1968 is now routine. Several of the best-remembered torchbearers in Olympic history have been women.
Who Carries It Next
The 2028 Games in Los Angeles will need thousands of torchbearers, and if the relay lives up to what we know about the LA28 plans, it will reach every state. Half of those torchbearers should be, and will be, women: coaches, nurses, teachers, veterans, athletes, mothers who trained before sunrise.
I am campaigning to carry the flame myself, and I have read what it takes to become a torchbearer. The relay's best stories have usually come from people someone else put forward. If there is a woman in your life who belongs on that route, nominate her.