After a long journey around the world, the Olympic cauldron is lit!

The identity of the person who will light the Olympic cauldron with the torch near the end of the opening ceremony is always a closely guarded secret until the last few moments.

After Rafael Nadal took the flame and returned to the River Seine, he was joined on a boat with Serena Williams, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci, and Team USA track star Carl Lewis, who took turns holding the Olympic torch.

The boat traveled back up the River Seine, the “reverse commute” of the parade as NBC commentator Mike Tirico said.

They eventually disembarked and handed the torch to French tennis legend Amélie Mauresmo, who ran up steps from the river and back into the city streets to the Louvre. She then handed the flame to French NBA player Tony Parker. The two ran together through an empty courtyard, past the iconic I. M. Pei glass pyramid.

They then handed the Olympic torch to three French Paralympic athletes and the five of them ran to hand the torch to Miguel Sánchez-Migallón, a handball player. The group of torchbearers, all clad in white, quickly ballooned to include 18 former Olympians, including the oldest living French Olympic champion, Charles Coste, who turned 100 this year.

The final two torch bearers, Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec, then lit the cauldron.

Pérec is a retired French track and field sprinter while Riner is a former Olympic judoka (a practitioner of the Japanese martial art, Judo.)

The person who lights the cauldron is usually a prominent name from the host country. The final torchbearer at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 was tennis star Naomi Osaka.

After the Olympic flame was lit in Greece back in April, it traveled around the world ahead of the games. First, there was a relay around Greece before the flame boarded the Belem, France’s oldest three-masted schooner. The boat was first launched in 1896, the first year of the modern Olympic Games. After 10 days at sea, the flame landed in Marseille, France.

The Olympic flame then traveled around the country, with events at iconic places like the Palace of Versailles and the D-Day Landing Beaches. It also traveled across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans as part of the “Oceans Relay” to reach six overseas territories: Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, French Polynesia — where the Olympics surfing competition will be held — New Caledonia and Reunion Island.