Leslie Kretzu ran her leg of the 2002 Olympic torch relay barefoot in frigid Philadelphia to call attention to what she says are abusive labor practices in Nike factories overseas.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals organized demonstrations on the torch route in Dallas, Little Rock and Boston to protest the Olympic rodeo. More are planned.
Beginning Friday in Chicago, a California-based animal rights group intends to hound the relay all the way to Salt Lake City in a truck equipped with large video screens showing injured or mistreated rodeo stock.
Several groups or individuals have used or plan to use the 2002 Winter Games torch relay as a platform for their causes. While protesters have not disrupted the 65-day event, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee prefers they stay away.
"It's certainly inappropriate for people to use the Olympic torch relay as their microphone," said Caroline Shaw, SLOC spokeswoman.
The nationwide relay, she said, recognizes those who uplift others, whether that be through surviving cancer or enduring the Sept. 11 loss of a loved one. Corporate relay sponsors selected torchbearers based on essays family or friends wrote about them.
"We believe it's an unfortunate disruption when people are there to be honored or to be inspired," Shaw said.
Olympic organizers can't do much about demonstrators who piggyback on the relay, but they try to stop torch carriers from being activists.
SLOC has strict rules against runners using their two-tenths of a mile to further a political, religious or social cause. Runners aren't permitted to tote signs or adorn their white uniforms with patches or logos. They must sign an affidavit affirming compliance with a long list of conditions.
There are exceptions, though.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was allowed to forgo the SLOC attire for an NYPD jacket and an FDNY hat to recognize Sept. 11 heros. Torchbearers with ties to that day also were permitted to hold photos or don firefighter or police uniforms on a New York ferry.
"They get hysterical" at the notion of someone wanting to carry a placard, said Brooklyn, N.Y., runner Kathy Goldman, whose friend made her signs reading "Sports not war" and "Bread not bombs." The friend waved the posters on a street corner as Goldman jogged by.
So far, only the barefooted Kretzu actually demonstrated while carrying the Olympic flame. But she points out that nothing she did violated SLOC rules.
Kretzu, whose sister nominated her for her human rights activities, said she started brainstorming about how to use the relay immediately after being chosen. She spent a month living with factory workers in Indonesia last year.
"It would be so hypocritical of me on this special day to turn a blind eye to those people I am committed to every other day," said Kretzu, who held a news conference afterward.
Olympic historian Kevin Wamsley said he's never heard of a runner using the torch relay as vehicle to protest.
"That's interesting," said the director of the International Center for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario. "That's not say it hasn't happened (before) but I'm not aware of it."
Demonstrations, though, aren't new to the Olympic torch relay. People chanted, waved signs and even staged a couple of blockades to protest the treatment of aboriginal Canadians during the 1988 Calgary event, Wamsley said. Their cry became "Share the blame," a takeoff on the torch theme "Share the flame."
"It was very passive," he said. "There was no violence."
Wamsley couldn't recall any picketing during the Sydney relay, though several exhibitionists bared all when the flame came through their neighborhood.
Olympic organizers on the Salt Lake relay route said PETA demonstrators caused no problems when they showed up to lunchtime or evening torch celebrations. They hardly noticed Kretzu.
"It didn't cause any stir at all," SLOC relay spokesman Mark Walker said. "We just keep on relaying."
PETA uses its nationwide activist network to put people in places through which the relay passes to hand out leaflets and literature decrying the Olympic rodeo, said Sean Diener, director of the Utah Animal Rights Coalition.
"The point isn't to disrupt the torch," he said. "It's to spread the message something atrocious is about to happen."
Steve Hindi, director of Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, plans to follow the relay from Chicago with his "tiger truck" ? a vehicle with large television screens on the four sides of the truck's box showing vivid rodeo scenes.
"We're going to be as close to the torch as we can be for as much of its tour as possible," he said. Hindi expects the tiger truck to draw local animal rights groups to torch stops in various cities.
Activists argue rodeos are inherently cruel to animals and don't follow Olympic ideals of peace and goodwill.
SLOC had nothing to say about the truck tailing its relay. "We haven't got to Chicago, so I have no comment," Walker said.
The torch has been traversing New England the past few days. It is en route today through New Hampshire and Vermont to Lake Placid, N.Y., site of previous Winter Games.
Contributing: Brady Snyder
E-mail: romboy@desnews.com