The Olympic flame will leave Atlanta one year from today and arrive in Salt Lake City two months later after completing a 65-day, 13,500-mile journey through 46 states that Olympic organizers say will be the most elaborate torch relay route ever undertaken in the United States.
The route — which will see the torch carried by 11,500 bearers and transported by dog sled, prairie schooner, canoe and train — was announced Monday morning by Olympic figure skating gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi in a segment of the "Today Show" on NBC.
Mitt Romney, Salt Lake Organizing Committee chairman, later said the choice of runners and details of the route through Utah would be announced later but that those decisions would all follow the theme of the 2002 Winter Games, "Light the Fire Within."
"There will be many memorable moments along the route," Romney said. He said cities and states included on the route were chosen jointly by the Olympic Torch Relay's two major sponsors — Coca-Cola and Chevrolet, which are donating the bulk of the $25 million cost of the relay — and SLOC.
The 2002 torch route includes more states than any previous Olympic torch relay and will include Alaska for the first time. In another unique touch, torchbearers will be chosen and will run as pairs, Romney said.
"We don't have all the details of how bearers will be chosen, but the theme is choosing people who have inspired others. We see the torch as an inspiration," Romney said. He said those chosen and their nominators will likely run "together," passing the torch from one to the other.
For example, "if I were nominating, I would nominate my second-grade teacher," Romney said, "then we might pass the torch one to another in the relay."
Bearers will also be chosen by the two sponsors and SLOC. Romney said nominations will likely be taken on SLOC's Internet site, but those details will be announced later. He said Coca-Cola and Chevrolet have not revealed how they will handle nominations, but they will "have their own process."
"There will be some famous and some not so famous people involved." The relay will celebrate relationships between people as well as the inspiration of the Games, Romney said.
The flame, by tradition, will be lighted in Greece using the rays of the sun and carried over the Atlantic Ocean in a Delta Air Lines 777 jetliner to Atlanta, where it will begin its U.S. journey. It will be carried from there through Southern states, then north through Mid-Atlantic states and New England, then southward through the Midwest through California to the Northwest, flown to Alaska, then back to Idaho and the Western states, arriving Feb. 3 or 4, depending on the weather, for a five-day run though Utah.
Romney said a celebration is planned Feb. 7 at the City and County Building in Salt Lake City when the flame arrives. On Feb. 8, it will be transported to Rice-Eccles Stadium for the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Games, where it will light the Olympic cauldron. It will remain at the stadium throughout the two weeks of the Games.
The exact route the flame will take through Utah will be announced "a month or two from now," but Romney said it will pass through as many cities and communities as possible.
"We can't hit every square foot of the state, but we'll make it possible for as much of the population to see the flame as we can," he said.
In a statement released Monday, President Clinton called the Olympic flame "the shining symbol of all that we cherish about the Olympics: the spirit of teamwork, the ideal of sportsmanship and the commitment to personal excellence that is shared by athletes around the world.
"Traveling thousands of miles, whether carried on foot, by plane, train, dog sled or automobile, the Olympic Flame will also illuminate what is best about America: not just the beauty and variety of our landscape but the generosity and enthusiasm of our people, great in diversity but united by the spirit of community that binds us together as one nation," Clinton said.
Romney said no changes can be made in the U.S. route, which was formulated with several issues in mind, including simple logistics of taking the flame to as many states as possible, providing representative scenic backdrops along the way, inclusion of all previous U.S. Olympic sites, and accommodation for special events along the way.
Atlanta, the site of the 1996 Summer Games, was a sentimental as well as traditional starting point for the relay.
"We wanted to connect with Atlanta," Romney said. "The high point of those Games was when Muhammad Ali carried the torch there. In a way, we're picking up the torch from him."
The design of the torch will be revealed later, Romney said. "We think we have one that is fitting to the Games and our theme."
Romney said although it's important for the torch relay to be a success for the sponsors, the torchbearers will be "commercially clean," carrying no commercial advertisement. "And that's hard to find in sporting events these days."
Details on the 2002 Olympic Torch Relay route are available on the SLOC Web site, www.saltlake2002.com.
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