Kostas Filippidis to be 1st torchbearer for Winter Olympics

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http://www.ansa.it/torino2006/notizie/n ... 02702.html

TURIN 2006: FOCUS; GREECE'S FILIPPIDIS FIRST TORCHBEARER
Greece's Kostas Filippidis, the 19-year-old pole vault champion, will be the first torchbearer in the relay that will bring the Olympic flame to Turin's Stadio Comunale, where it will light up the 2006 Winter Olympics on the evening of February 10. This was announced by the Greek Olympic Committee. On November 27 he will be handed the flame from the hands of the first priestess, the actress Theodora Siarkou who replaces Thalia Prokopiou after four Olympics. The last torchbearer on Olympic territory, on December 6 at the Panathinaikon Stadium - the theatre of the first modern Olympics in 1896 - will be Olympic 400-metres hurdles champion Fani Chalkia, who will see the flame off on its departure for Italy. KVD

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051127/ts ... 1127150855

ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece (AFP) - The Olympic Flame torch relay of the Turin 2006 Winter Games has set out in the hands of a Greek 19-year-old pole vault champion, embarking on a three-month journey from Ancient Olympia to Athens, Rome and northern Italy.

Dressed in the white-and-orange uniform of the 2006 Winter Games, Costas Filippidis became the first of 10,535 torchbearers in a relay exceeding 13,300 kilometres (8,264 miles), and expected to feature Italian designer Giorgio Armani, legendary gymnast Juri Chechi, Formula One driver Jarno Trulli and Pope Benedict XVI's Vatican Swiss Guard.

Overcast skies -- and a rain forecast for Sunday -- prevented Greek organisers from fully carrying out a ritual ceremony involving actresses in the garb of ancient priestesses in Olympia, southwestern Greece, where the Olympics were born in 776 BC.

The priestesses were to use a polished concave mirror to capture the sun's rays inside the Temple of Hera, patron of marriage and the senior goddess of the ancient Greek pantheon.

Instead, Filippidis lit the sledgetip-shaped torch of the February 10-26 Turin Games with fire sparked by high priestess Theodora Siarkou during Saturday's successful dress rehearsal.

The flame had likewise failed to light at the designated moment for the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Games.

"Every two years, the entire world turns to Olympia to renew the miracle of a flame that moves from city to city, announcing that soon there will be 16 days of pure sports and competition," said Valentino Castellani, chairman of the Turin Games organising committee (TOROC).

Moments later, Siarkou and 17 other priestesses emerged from the hills overlooking the Ancient Olympia archaeological site, and into a cypress grove dedicated to Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin -- founder of the modern Olympics -- with an archaic-style vessel containing the sacred flame of the Games.

The Olympic flame will symbolically cover 2,006 kilometres (1,246 miles) on Greek soil during 10 days.

It will visit eight ski centres across Greece before arriving in Athens' all-marble Panathenaic Stadium -- site of the 1896 first modern Olympics -- on December 6, to be handed over to Turin organisers.

Two Winter Games medalists who are now members of the International Olympic Committee will be among the relay runners, along with fellow Greek Olympic Committee (HOC) member Lambis Nikolaou, who will run on Sunday evening.

"Whether male or female, young or old, able-bodied or with a disability, high-level athlete or amateur, the flame will unite us all," said Nikolaou, conveying a message from IOC president Jacques Rogge.

Japan's Chiharu Igaya, a participant in three Winter Games and a slalom silver medalist in 1956, will cross the 2.2-kilometre Rio-Antirrio bridge connecting to mainland Greece on November 28.

Sweden's 1992 giant slalom gold medalist Pernilla Wiberg, a four-time Olympian, is to light an Olympic altar at the ski centre of Tria Pente Pigadia in northwestern Greece on December 2.

Turin 2006 organisers will subsequently fly the flame on a C-130J military transport plane to Rome, where the second leg of the relay will start at the Piazza del Quirinale on December 7.

The Olympic flame will tour 140 Italian cities before arriving at Turin's Stadio Communale for the opening ceremony of the Games on February 10, 2006.

Relay legs will also run in Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, San Marino and France, where the flame will visit the former Winter Olympic cities of Grenoble (1968) and Albertville (1992).

The Winter Olympics are a modern phenomenon unrelated to the Games of Greek antiquity. The first Winter Games were held at Chamonix, France in 1924, shortly before the Paris summer Olympics of that year.

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http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=1245

Turin, We Have a Problem...

January 4, 2006

Sponsor
It's an ancient symbol, an icon of the Olympic games. And a little ergonomic forethought might have made the darn thing easier to carry.

Hailed as a masterpiece of design and technology and created by Italy's top engineers, there's just one problem with the torch for this year's Winter Olympics in Turin. Many of the torchbearers say it is just too heavy, The Observer reported earlier this week.

At nearly 2 kilos (4.4lb), runners carrying the aluminum torch in relay across Italy to the opening ceremony say it is difficult to hold aloft for long.

A Burning Pain?
'Running with it is quite tough,' said Greek pole vault champion Kostas Filippidis, 19, one of the first torchbearers. 'I don't think it's possible to run even 100 meters with your arm outstretched, and if you bend your arm you risk the flame coming too near your body.'

'The torch is a bit too heavy and you can't run as you would like,' said Italian former boxing champion Nino Benvenuti. 'I had to keep changing it from arm to arm in order to hold it up.'

The Olympic flame - brought from Athens to Rome on 7 December - is on a two-month journey across Italy in the torch, which resembles the point of a ski. Produced by a team at the renowned Pininfarina design factory in Turin, it weighs 1.97 kilos (4.3lb).

Only two other torches have been heavier - that for the Innsbruck games in 1964 weighed 2.25 kilos (nearly 5lb) and the torch for the London games in 1948 weighed in at 2.15 kilos (4.74lb).

Francesco Lovo, head of the design team, said the torch had to be 'very robust' to cope with extremes of weather. 'We were working to specifications given to us by the Winter Olympics Committee,' he said. Committee members wanted to avoid problems afflicting the Athens 2004 torch, which weighed 770 grams (under 2lb), and was deemed too fragile.

Lovo denied a report in the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero that the torch was dangerous because runners were forced to hold it too close to their bodies. 'It's a real flame, not a flashing light, so of course people have to be careful and hold it at a distance,' he said.

'Everything is a trade-off, but we felt it was important to have a torch that was safe, resistant to weather and strong enough to withstand human error, such as someone dropping it. There is no protocol about how it's carried. You can walk with it, run with it, hold it high or at waist level. It's up to the individual runners.'

Source: The Observer


-- Barbara McMahon / The Observer