DUBLIN (AP) — The Olympic flame has arrived in Dublin on a cross-border journey to celebrate Northern Ireland’s peace process and strong British-Irish ties.
The symbol of the London Games was exchanged at the border in a dawn ceremony designed to highlight the hopes of reconciliation between the north’s British Protestants and the predominantly Catholic rest of Ireland.
Boxer Wayne McCullough, a Protestant from Belfast, passed the flame to fellow boxer Michael Carruth of Dublin. The two were Olympic medal-winning teammates in 1992, when McCullough took silver as a bantamweight and Carruth gold as a welterweight.
After a high-speed convoy to Dublin, the flame was presented to Ireland’s head of state, President Michael D. Higgins, outside the Irish Olympic headquarters in the suburban fishing port of Howth. Several thousand spectators packed the harbor.
