THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS — From start to finish, there was no respite from the protests. Only moments after the first Olympic torchbearer began his descent down the Eiffel Tower, a protester shouted "Freedom for the Chinese!" and lunged toward the flame.
The torch hadn’t even reached solid ground yet — it was still on the tower’s first floor — and already havoc had broken out at Monday’s torch rally in Paris.
Later, protesters booed trucks emblazoned with the names of Olympic corporate sponsors. They chained themselves to railings. They hurled water at the flame and hung banners depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs from atop the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral.
Eventually, Chinese organizers simply gave up: they cancelled the final third of what they had envisioned as a triumphant jog past world famous landmarks like the Louvre, the Seine River bridges and the Place de la Concorde. They put the torch on board a bus and sent it to its final destination, a sports stadium, where more protesters waited.
Citywide, the thousands of demonstrators slowed the relay to a stop-start crawl, with displays of anger over China’s holding of the Olympic Games, its grip on Tibet and human rights failings, defying 3,000 officers — some deployed in jogging gear and inline skates.
The Interior Ministry said police made 18 arrests. Officers sprayed tear gas to break up a sit-in by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the route.
Police tackled protesters who ran at the torch. At least two activists got almost within arm’s length before they were grabbed by police. Near the Louvre, police grabbed a protester who approached the flame with a fire extinguisher.
Five times, Chinese officials in dark glasses and tracksuits who guard the symbolic torch extinguished it and retreated to the safety of a bus — the last time for good until the vehicle had driven them to the stadium at the end of the route. There, a torchbearer ran the last five metres on foot.
Outside, a handful of French activists supporting Tibet had a fist-fight with pro-Chinese demonstrators.
France’s former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, stressed that though the torch was snuffed out at times, the Olympic flame itself still burned in a lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights.
A Chinese official said that flame was used to re-light the torch each time it was brought aboard the bus.
With protesters slowing down the relay, a planned stop at Paris City Hall was cancelled. Earlier, French officials had hung a banner declaring support for human rights on the building’s facade.
In San Francisco, where the torch is due to arrive Wednesday, three protesters wearing harnesses and helmets climbed up the Golden Gate Bridge and tied the Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables. The banners read "One World One Dream. Free Tibet" and "Free Tibet."
The torch will not travel to Canada, with San Francisco being the only North American stop on its journey to Beijing.
Denis Masseglia, a spokesman for the French Olympic Committee, estimated one-third of the 80 people, many of them athletes, who had been slated to carry the torch did not get to do so.
On a bus carrying French athletes, one man in a truck suit shed a tear as protesters pelted the vehicle with eggs, bottles and soda cans.
Athletes want International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge to provide stronger guidelines on how they should conduct themselves.
In Beijing for meetings, Rogge was asked by the president of the European Olympic Committees to spell out "what athletes can and cannot do" to express political views during the Beijing Olympics. Patrick Hickey said Rogge promised to lay out ground rules Thursday.
.In general, athletes are prohibited under the Olympic Charter from expressing political views while at Olympic venues or wearing clothing or other symbols that carry a political message.
On Monday, Rogge said: "I’m very concerned with the international situation and what’s happening in Tibet."
"The torch relay has been targeted. The International Olympic Committee has expressed its serious concerns and calls for a rapid, peaceful resolution in Tibet." Rogge also tried to quell talk of a boycott. "Some politicians have played with the idea of boycotts," Rogge said. "As I speak today, however, there is no momentum for a generalized boycott."
At the start, on the Eiffel Tower’s first floor, Green party activist Sylvain Garel lunged for the first torchbearer, former hurdler Stephane Diagana, before security officials pulled him back.
"It is inadmissible that the games are taking place in the world’s biggest prison," Garel said later.
Outside parliament, as the torch passed, 35 legislators protested, shouting "Freedom for Tibet."
Pro-China advocates carrying national flags held counter-demonstrations.
"The Olympic Games are about sports. It’s not fair to turn them into politics," said Gao Yi, a Chinese second-year doctoral student in Paris in computer sciences.
At least one athlete, former Olympic champion Marie-Jose Perec, was supportive of demonstrators. She told French television: "I think it is very, very good that people have mobilized like that."
But other athletes and sports officials were bitterly dismayed.
"A symbol like that, carried by young people who want to deliver a message of peace, should be allowed to pass," said the head of the French Olympic Committee, Henri Serandour.
IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies agreed. "We respect that right for people to demonstrate peacefully, but equally there is a right for the torch to pass peacefully and the runners to enjoy taking part in the relay," she said.
Police had hoped to prevent the chaos that marred the relay in London a day earlier. There, police had repeatedly scuffled with activists and 37 people were arrested.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has left open the possibility of boycotting the Olympic opening ceremony.
Activists have been protesting along the torch route since the flame embarked on its 136,800-kilometre journey from Ancient Olympia in Greece to the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics.
The round-the-world trip is the longest in Olympic history, and is meant to highlight China’s rising economic and political power. Activists have seized on it as a platform for their causes.