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Athens unveils route for Olympic torch
Athens, Nov 27: The route of the Olymic torch was announced in Athens. The Olympics flame will travel where no torch has been before next year after the route of the relay carrying the sacred flame to the 2004 Summer Games in Athens was announced on Wednesday (November 26).
Athens, Nov 27: The route of the Olymic torch was announced in Athens. The Olympics flame will travel where no torch has been before next year after the route of the relay carrying the sacred flame to the 2004 Summer Games in Athens was announced on Wednesday (November 26).
For the first time in the history of the Games, the torch will be carried through Africa and South America, the Athens Olympic Organising Committee (ATHOC) said in a statement.
The 33 foreign cities through which the torch will pass are Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, New Delhi, Cairo, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Los Angeles, St Louis, Atlanta, New York, Montreal, Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva, Lausanne, Paris, London, Barcelona, Rome, Munich, Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, Sofia and Nicosia.
From its lighting by the rays of the sun at Olympia, the original site of the ancient Games in Greece, the torch will travel for 35 days in 27 countries, including Greece, before it is used to light the cauldron at the formal opening of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens on August 13.
It is proposed to light the torch on March 25 -- the date when the first modern Games started in Athens in 1896 -- and the international leg will start on June 4.
It will travel to the host city of the 2000 Games, Sydney, where Australian athlete Cathy Freeman will be the first foreign carrier of the torch. Freeman lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Games.
In other firsts for the relay, it will travel through all previous Summer Games host cities for the first time and visit all land masses represented by the Olympic rings -- Oceania, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe.
More than 3,600 torchbearers will carry the flame, each of them running about 400 metres in a total journey over land that will cover 1,500 kms (950 miles).
"The Olympic flame will travel an average of 48 kms (39 miles) a day travelling via torchbearers, cars, planes, ships, bicycles, wheelchairs and motorcycles," the ATHOC statement said.
Under the relay arrangements a lantern, also lit at Olympia, will travel with the torch and is never extinguished. It is used to light the torch for the start of each day's relay.
The relay was not part of either the ancient Games or the first few modern Games. It was introduced for the first before the 1936 Berlin Games.
Bureau Report
It will travel to the host city of the 2000 Games, Sydney, where Australian athlete Cathy Freeman will be the first foreign carrier of the torch. Freeman lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Games.
In other firsts for the relay, it will travel through all previous Summer Games host cities for the first time and visit all land masses represented by the Olympic rings -- Oceania, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe.
More than 3,600 torchbearers will carry the flame, each of them running about 400 metres in a total journey over land that will cover 1,500 kms (950 miles).
"The Olympic flame will travel an average of 48 kms (39 miles) a day travelling via torchbearers, cars, planes, ships, bicycles, wheelchairs and motorcycles," the ATHOC statement said.
Under the relay arrangements a lantern, also lit at Olympia, will travel with the torch and is never extinguished. It is used to light the torch for the start of each day's relay.
The relay was not part of either the ancient Games or the first few modern Games. It was introduced for the first before the 1936 Berlin Games.
Bureau Report