Carrying the Fire
While there are still 105 days until the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the Olympic Torch Relay has already begun.Some 12,000 people will participate in the relay, which runs from October 30, 2009 to February 12, 2010 (the longest relay in Olympic history). The relay part…
While there are still 105 days until the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the Olympic Torch Relay has already begun.
Some 12,000 people will participate in the relay, which runs from October 30, 2009 to February 12, 2010 (the longest relay in Olympic history). The relay participants “will run, walk, paddle, wheel, sail, and even fly” the flame across Canada, says an October 28 press release from the Vancouver Organizing Committee.
Fly? How do you carry the Olympic flame on board an aircraft?
The easy way—in a miner’s lantern for safekeeping.
On October 29, Greek officials entrusted the Olympic flame to a Canadian delegation, which included two flame attendants. The attendants—22-year-old Dina Ouellette and 23-year-old Aronhiaies Herrne—used a wand to capture the flame and light a miner's lantern, the Vancouver Organizing Committee reported. The delegation—and the flame—boarded a Canadian Forces CC-150 Polaris, and were scheduled to arrive in Victoria, British Columbia at 7:15 a.m. (Pacific Time), Friday, October 30.