Sometimes things just won't go right, even when you have the Gods of ancient Olympia on your side. Take the `sacred' flame for next month's Winter Olympic Games in Nagano. It keeps going out.

Not once, not twice, but at least half a dozen times since the traditional torch relay through Japan to Nagano started on Tuesday.

The embarrassment has become front page news in Japan and television networks have called in experts of all kinds to explain what might be wrong. The guesses range from high winds, to faulty gas supplies in the torches to runners holding the thing the wrong way.

Officials do not think the problem is with the torches or the design since they were used in a similar relay last month in Greece after the flame was kindled at the Greek temple sanctuary of Olympia.

"We want to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible. Things like this do not look good and reflect badly on the Nagano Games," a games spokesman said.

Things went smoothly on the first day of the relay in which three torches are being carried by 7,000 runners through different parts of the country to be reunited at Nagano for the February 7th opening ceremony.

But on Wednesday and again yesterday, the flame flickered and then died a total of six times on two of the routes. Each time a backup torch was brought out of a following vehicle to rekindle the errant flame.

"It might be that we have not been thorough enough in our instructions on how to run with the torch," one relay official suggested.

The Nagano Organising Committee does not believe it is human error. After an exhaustive investigation, it says if the wind is over 54 k.m.h. (33.5 m.p.h.) or if the flow of gas to the flame is not sufficient, the torch could go out.

However Nagano governor Goro Yoshimura is adopting a God-like approach to the problem. "Well, it's a flame, so sometimes it goes out," he told reporters.

As many parts of Japan were blanketed yesterday by the heaviest snow for two years, no one was taking any bets that the problem was going to go away. "Sometimes you just can't win," a bemused relay official sighed.