The triple gold medalist at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, who is now a successful entrepreneur, took a stunt-like and painstaking journey around the top of the stadium, better known as the Bird's Nest, before setting ablaze the giant cauldron.

Lifted with computer-controlled wires on his waist, the 45-year-old Li imitated running along the 500-meter-long, 14-meter-wide brim of the bowl-shaped, roofless top of the Bird's Nest, which is also a gigantic screen.

Videos of the Olympic torch's global relay, covering a record distance of some 137,000 kilometers in 129 days, was shown on the screen, closely following Li's running paces as if a painting scroll was being unfolded.

"Today, the Olympic flame lit in Olympia has come to the end of its odyssey and will be kindled to adorn the night sky of Beijing," said Liu Qi, head of the Games' organizing committee, in an earlier speech, while calling the cauldron lighting a "dazzling historic moment."

The worldwide relay of the Beijing Olympic torch, designed to be a "journey of harmony," endured many unexpected hardships, particularly violent protests by "Tibet independence" supporters and even attempts to seize and extinguish it.

Its domestic relay was also halted for three days as the nation mourned its quake dead in May, and the route rescheduled to avoid any impact on the relief work in the quake-stricken Sichuan Province.