Uri Geller

Geller: I stopped Olympic Flames

Geller: I Stopped Olympic Flame

Psychic Uri Geller claims he caused the Olympic flame to get stuck as it was winched to the top of Stadium Australia during the opening ceremony.

Geller said he had concentrated his mind to make the cauldron of flames appear to stall on its journey after being lit by Australian Cathy Freeman.

The mechanism carrying the steel bowl of flame appeared to stop at one point.

Reported by ITV Teletext on the 15/9/00

Webmasters personal note: During a trip to Uri's Home in August he said to me personally he had something special planned for the Olympics!

As reported from http://www.olympics.smh.com.au;
'I stalled Olympic cauldron': Uri Geller

8:11AM, Sep 16

  Spoon-bending psychic Uri Geller claims to have solved the mystery of what stopped the Olympic cauldron.
  Geller said he had concentrated his mind to make the Olympic flame to get stuck as it was winched to the top of Stadium Australia during the opening ceremony.
  He said he was at his home in Sonning-on-Thames near Reading in Britain, when he focused on the flame for 11 minutes as part of his vision of global nuclear disarmament.
  The crown of the Olympic cauldron stalled soon after being lit by Olympic athlete Cathy Freeman and rising out of a pool of water.
  After an anxious wait of around three minutes, the cauldron was raised by hydraulic lift to its final position.
  Geller claims to have stopped Big Ben twice and has made millions out of his spoon-bending activities.
  "My wife Hanna and son Daniel came screaming into the room and told me what had happened," he told the Press Association. "It was unbelievable."
  Opening Ceremony organiser Ric Birch admitted to reporters after the ceremony that there was a "small hiccup" in the lighting. But he said he didn't know what caused the cauldron to stall.
  "I'd have to say in the end although the cauldron certainly stopped and caused us some extraordinary adrenaline rushes at the time, in the end the engineering team did recover from it," Mr Birch said.
  "We don't even know the reason for it stopping yet, so if any media do we'd be thrilled to hear from you."

AAP

Australia puts heart and soul into Games
By Peter Foster and Barbie Dutter in Sydney

She applied the flame but for an agonising minute it seemed as if the flaming bowl would fail to make its ascent to the summit of the stadium wall, where it will burn for the next 16 days. A nervous titter broke out around the crowd as the flaming crucible juddered to a halt, threatening humiliation in front of a worldwide audience of more than three billion people. Then it was free, gliding serenely skywards to the relief of everyone, not least Ric Birch, the director of ceremonies.

He said afterwards: "There was a little hiccup and everything had been going so well until then. But then all's well that ends well." The psychic Uri Geller yesterday claimed that he had caused the Olympic flame to get stuck. He said that he was at his home in Sonning-on-Thames near Reading, when he focused on the flame for 11 minutes as part of his quest for global nuclear disarmament.