Muhammad Ali, his left hand twitching from the ravages of Parkinson's syndrome but his right hand steady with the torch, stood bathed in light at the top of Olympic Stadium and dramatically lit the flame to open the games early Saturday.
Ali was a boxing gold medalist at Rome in 1960 as Cassius Clay, but he flung his award in the river upon returning home to Louisville, Ky., after being confronted by a group of racist whites.In the hometown of Martin Luther King Jr., who dreamed of a day when all races would live together without prejudice, Ali's Olympic odyssey came full circle - a moment that packed all the punch of the archer firing an arrow to light the torch in Barcelona four years ago.
Ali, perhaps the most famous athlete the world has ever known, took the flame from four-time gold medal swimmer Janet Evans at the top of the rampway where some 10,000 athletes had just marched into the stadium.
He held the torch in his right hand, his left hand shaking uncontrollably from the effects of a boxing career that took him to the height of popularity - and three heavyweight championships - but wound up leaving him a shell of his former self.
At the past two Olympics - Barcelona in 1992 and Lillehammer in '94 - the torch-lighting ceremony was punctuated by the method used to launch the games.
A Spanish archer fired an arrow over the stadium in Barcelona to ignite the flame, while a ski jumper soared off a ramp in Norway with the torch in his hand.
In Atlanta, the organizers decided that one name - Ali - would be dramatic enough.
Another former heavyweight champ, Atlanta resident Evander Holyfield, brought the torch into the stadium, then made a lap around the track with Greek hurdler Voula Patoulidou before handing it off to Evans.
Evans carried the torch to the base of the cauldron and waited for Ali. Dressed in a white shirt and pants, he slowly walked up a ramp from the back of the stadium to take his place as "The Greatest" once again.
He took control of the torch and looked out over the awestruck crowd of 83,000. After acknowledging the cheers for a few seconds and steadying his left hand by grasping the torch, Ali gingerly leaned over to light a large wick that was lifted by a wire to the cauldron above.
Afterward, President Clinton and Ali had a brief moment together. They hugged and clasped hands.
"He was great, wasn't he?" the president said.
What a moment it was for the man known as "The Louisville Lip" when he won the light-heavyweight gold medal at the Rome Games 36 years ago.
Ali was only 18 when he won a unanimous decision over Zbigniew Pietrzykowski of Poland, a three-time European champion and the veteran of 231 fights.
But boxing was only part of Ali's appeal. He loved the Roman crowds and bantered with them incessantly. He spouted poetry and always had a quote for reporters, or anyone else. In the first Olympics on videotape, he was a hit on delayed highlights back home.
But when he returned, the gold-medalist found a different world, filled with racial hatred. In his autobiography, "The Greatest," Ali wrote that he threw his Olympic gold medal into the Ohio River after a fight with a white motorcycle gang, which started when he and a friend were refused service at a Louisville restaurant.
"The medal was gone," he said, "but I felt calmly relaxed, confident. My holiday as a White Hope was over. I felt new, secret strength."