Posted on 06/21/2004 2:03:56 PM PDT by Buford T. Justice
Sunday, June 20, 2004
MONTREAL
A flag-waving crowd cheered as the Olympic flame relay set out Sunday morning on a 60-kilometre tour of the city to celebrate the 2004 Games in Athens.
Spiros Lambridis, head of the Athens 2004 delegation that is staging relays in Olympic cities around the world, Greek consul George Sapounidis and mayor Gerald Tremblay set the flame in motion at a ceremony outside Olympic Stadium in the city's east end, the main venue for the 1976 Games.
"This is a symbolic place," said Tremblay. "The Olympic flame has come back to Montreal."
Tremblay took the lighted torch from Lambridis and placed it in a holder on the wheelchair of the first carrier, George Adamopoulos, one of several individuals who will carry the flame along with Canadian athletes.
Many in the crowd of a few hundred waved blue and white Greek flags and many more lined the street as the relay began its day-long voyage through 11 city boroughs.
Each of the 120 runners were to carry the flame about 400 metres. Among the early runners were Montreal Expos coach and former major league pitcher Claude Raymond and 1992 Olympic backstroke gold medallist Mark Tewksbury.
Annie Pelletier, who won a bronze medal in diving at the 1996 Games, attended the send-off and was to carry the torch later in the day.
"It'll be a moment of nostalgia for me," said Pelletier, who works in public relations for the Canadian Olympic Committee. "It has been eight years since I retired from the Olympic lifestyle, but today when I woke up, I did the same visualizing I did when I was competing.
"I had goosebumps."
The last carrier was to be former sprinter Bruny Surin, a 1996 relay gold medallist, as the relay ended at the Cite des Arts du Cirque in the city's northeast.
Young people were dressed in traditional Greek costume at the send-off ceremony. In a nostalgic touch, city official Andre Lessard wore a gaudy yellow Canadian team track suit from the 1976 Olympics,
Montreal is the 15th stop on 33-city tour on five continents where torch relays are to be held in June and July.
The flame began its trek on March 25 at the Temple of Hera in the Games' ancient birthplace at Olympia for a tour of Greece.
It then travelled to Sydney, Australia, host of the 2000 Summer Games, on June 4 before stopping in Melbourne, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Delhi, Cairo, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta and New York.
The flame will be in Antwerp, Belgium on Monday to begin the tour's European leg.
On July 9, the flame returns to Greece for a final tour of that country before it reaches Athens for the start of the Games on Aug. 13.
Along the route, the flame will travel 75,300 kilometres and be carried by more than 3,600 people.
The flags were not all Greek and Canadian. A group of about 20 protesters from Canada-Tibet Committee held Tibetan flags and signs denouncing the 2008 Games in Beijing. One sign read: Athens Yes, Beijing No.
"We're here to protest for a free Tibet and for human rights, but also that the Olympics should be more responsible in deciding where the Olympics should be," said Losang Champa, a Canadian of Tibetan descent.
Its funny that Montreal even wanted to be reminded it held the Olympics because the costs of building the facilities and running the games bankrupted the city.
Let me know when Montreal goes up in flames.
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