Ex-gymnast Comaneci takes flame on London tour

Former Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci and ex-basketball star John Amaechi will carry the Olympic flame as it begins a seven-day tour of London on Saturday. The pair will take the torch relay to the roof of the North Greenwich Arena, the venue on the banks of the River Thames that will host gymnastics events and basketball finals during the Games. Footballer Fabrice Muamba, who suffered a heart attack during an FA Cup match in March, will also carry the flame at the end of the 64th day its 8,000-mile (12,800-kilometre) relay around Britain and the Republic of Ireland. He will take it through the east London borough of Waltham Forest, where he lived as a boy after moving to Britain from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Muamba was left fighting for his life after collapsing on the pitch while playing for Bolton Wanderers at Tottenham Hotspur's White Hart Lane ground during an FA Cup tie on March 17. The 24-year-old, whose heart stopped for 78 minutes, was taken to a specialist London hospital where he made a remarkable recovery. Also on Saturday's line-up is Britain's oldest marathon runner Fauja Singh, aged 101 years old, who will carry the torch through the east London borough of Newham. He started running marathons at the age of 89 and has since completed nine of them, including the 2012 London Marathon in April which he finished in 7 hours 49 minutes. He also carried the flame while it was in London for the 2004 Athens Games. The flame's London tour follows its dramatic arrival in the British capital on Friday when it was flown in by military helicopter and lowered to the ground by a marine commando. Royal Marine Martyn Williams abseiled from a Sea King helicopter hovering over the River Thames, carrying the Olympic flame to the ground in a lantern. The flame was to then spend the night locked up in the Tower of London, where Queen Elizabeth II keeps her ceremonial jewels and where the Olympic medals are also being stored for safekeeping. Earlier Friday police arrested a 17-year-old man after he tried to grab the torch from a female torchbearer while it passed through Gravesend, a town southeast of London. The teenager sprinted out of the crowd toward the torchbearer and was grabbed by the security officers accompanying the torch. Beginning in Greenwich on Saturday, the torch will travel through every London borough in the coming week, carried by 982 torchbearers. The last torchbearer will light a cauldron at the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium, marking the official start of the Games on July 27. Romanian gymnast Comaneci won three Olympic golds in the 1976 Montreal Olympics -- where she was the first Olympic gymnast to get a perfect score of 10 -- and two golds in Moscow in 1980. Former NBA player Amaechi was born in Boston, in the US, but grew up in Stockport, near Manchester, northwest England.