Chinese team takes Olympic flame to Everest summit

A CHINESE mountaineering team took the Olympic flame to the top of the world yesterday, a spectacular feat dreamed up to underscore China’s ambitions for the Beijing Games.

The Mount Everest climbers could be heard struggling for breath in a live television broadcast as five torchbearers each shuffled a few feet before passing on the flame to the next person. The final torchbearer, a Tibetan named Cering Wangmo, stood silently on the peak with her torch while other team members unfurled small Chinese and Olympic flags.

They clustered together, cheering “We made it” and “Beijing welcomes you”.

“One World, One Dream,” team captain Nyima Cering yelled as his torch was lit, repeating the Beijing Olympics slogan.

“We have lit the torch on top of the world,” another climber said.

The 19-member team, dressed in red parkas emblazoned with Olympic logos, broke camp at 27,390ft before dawn and reached the summit of the 29,035ft mountain a little more than six hours later.

The stop at the top of Everest was meant to be the highlight of the Beijing Olympics torch relay.

But the Everest relay has been criticised from the outset because of China’s often harsh rule over Tibet — where the mountain is located — and it drew even more intense scrutiny after Tibetans across western China erupted in anti-government protests in March.

Organisers hoped the dramatic image of the torch atop Everest would counter some of the damaging publicity from protests that marred the international leg of the torch relay.

Politics aside, taking the torch to Everest’s peak and broadcasting it live was a technological feat. China’s state broadcaster CCTV spent heavily to build a television studio at base camp and to construct transmission points at four camps on the mountain face.

The team used torches designed by rocket scientists to take the flame along the final icy incline to the peak.

The Everest flame is separate from the main Olympic torch, which was yesterday on the opposite side of China, in the south-eastern province of Guangdong, the heart of Chinese manufacturing. The main torch was not taken up Everest because a delay owing to bad weather would have thrown the schedule off for the whole relay.

The main flame will cross every region of China, returning to Beijing on August 6, two days before the opening ceremony.