When Olympic flame misfired

Then the hole in the ground where the missing arm was to have appeared was covered up and the three-legged cauldron burned bright. The man in charge of the ceremony said that his staff were investigating the cause of the malfunction. “It’s a very complex piece of equipment. As you saw,it literally had to dance its place into its final position,” artistic director David Atkins told reporters. Unfortunately,the trap that revealed it from the floor of the stadium,which worked perfectly well at the beginning of the ceremony … with the totems rising from the floor,had some mechanical failure.”

He put on a brave face,however,lauding his team for quickly finding a solution. “It was an example of the fact that we’re all human,and the ceremony celebrated that fact in all sorts of ways. The hand of God coming in to remind us that we’ve some sort of fallibility there.”