Mexican sprinter Enriqueta Basilio, the first woman who lit the Olympic flame at the 1968 Games in Mexico City, died on October 26 at the age of 71, according to the Mexican Olympic Committee, which did not specify the cause of her death. 

On October 12, 1968, 20-year-old Basilio, who was still a member of the Mexican track and field team, entered Estadio Olímpico Universitario carrying the torch after 2,775 runners from Greece to Mexico. She first ran a lap around the stadium before lighting the flame to the ovation of some 100,000 audience in the stadium.

Basilio said she had been selected to do the honors because Mexican men and women have "the same rights"and her country was trying to show that to the whole world, according to the New York Times.

"Anyone with acutely sensitive ears could then hear a spectral sound. It would have been the ancient Greeks spinning madly in their crumbling mausoleums. They never permitted a woman to come near their Olympic Games but had summary punishment for every female intruder detected. She was promptly tossed off a seaside cliff onto the rocks below. Here was a woman in a focal role a couple of thousand years later. She handled it well," wrote Arthur Daley, a sports columnist at the New York Times.

Basilio raced in the 400-meter, the 80-meter hurdles, and the 400-meter relay but was eliminated in all three events. She never participated in the Summer Olympics again.

After Basilio, another woman lit the Olympic flame — Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman in Sydney in 2000. In 2004, Basilio carried the Olympic torch again as it arrived in Mexico City before reaching Athens.