Teddy Riner and Marie-Jose Perec joined the exclusive list of people to light an Olympic cauldron when they set alight the Mathieu Lehanneur-designed boiler in Paris on Friday.

It looked as if Zinedine Zidane would light it, but he handed it off to Rafael Nadal. The Spanish tennis legend took the flame from French football hero Zidane in a unifying twist to the flame's path to Paris. 

The man they call Zizou was a tremendous football player for Spanish club Real Madrid and Nadal is one of the most dominant French Open competitors of all-time.

It would've been a pretty selfless gesture from France as the hosts to defer honor to their southwestern neighbor, and it was, but Nadal would give the torch to American tennis star Serena Williams, then Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, and then American sprinter Carl Lewis.

Twenty-four athletes would wind up with a temporary hold on the torch, with the final job going to Riner and Perec.

So who are they?

Guadeloupe-born Teddy Riner, 35, has won gold in judo at three-consecutive Olympic Games.

He also has a pair of bronze medals and dozens of medals won outside of the Olympics.

Marie-Jose Perec, 56, was also born in Guadeloupe and also has three gold medals to her name, winning one at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and two at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

The Olympic cauldron for these Games is "a tribute to the first flight in a hydrogen-filled gas balloon," which was invented in-part by French physicist Jacques Charles.

The ring of flames is seven meters in diameter and the 'balloon' is 30 meters high and 22 meters wide.

Designer Mathieu Lehanneur's creation is said to "conclude" the allegory of the French motto of equality and fraternity.

The idea for the Olympic flame has its roots in ancient Greece, where a sacred fire was kept burning throughout the Ancient Olympics in deference to "the gods."

A symbolic fire was introduced in 1928 to showcase the tournament's location to the surrounding community.

The Olympic flame relay has its genesis in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, when secretary general Carl Diem suggested a flame lit in Greece make its way to Germany.