|
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Torch will have unusual travels
Posted: Tuesday May 02, 2000 10:42 AM
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- In the most varied route ever leading into an Olympic Games opening ceremony, travel plans for the Sydney 2000 Olympic torch were expected to include underwater travel and even time travel. And just like the proposed underwater submersion, the time travel segment will be no illusion. Organizers of the torch relay, which begins May 10 at Mt. Olympia in Greece and culminates with the Sept. 15 opening ceremony in Sydney, said the torch was scheduled to be in two countries at the same time during the Oceania leg. The torch lands May 22 in Guam to commence the Oceania leg, which will see it touch down in 11 South Pacific nations and be carried by heads of state, supreme court judges and warriors clad in traditional dress. On Monday, May 29, the torch is scheduled to visit Vanuatu and Samoa at virtually the same time -- but only on paper. The nations sit on either side of the international dateline, which means the relay will gain time crossing the dateline from west to east. It will then travel to American Samoa and the Cook Islands before crossing back over the dateline -- the relatively short flight from the Cook Islands to Tonga scheduled to start May 31 and finish June 2 due to time zone difference -- before continuing to Fiji and New Zealand. En route to Australia, it will be transported by helicopter to the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, will be carried by the southern hemisphere's first winter Olympic medallist, Annelise Coberger, down the slopes in New Zealand's snowfields and will be the centerpiece of a celebration at the former home of author Robert Louis Stevenson. Nova Peris-Kneebone, a 1996 Olympic hockey gold medalist and the first Aboriginal Australian to win Olympic gold, will commence the final 100-day leg of the relay after the torch lands June 8 at Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, in Central Australia. While in the northern state of Queensland, the flame was expected to be carried underwater for three minutes by a scuba diver n the Great Barrier Reef. The torch had even been scheduled to travel into orbit on the space shuttle Atlantis but a series of weather delays forced the launch to be postponed until mid-May, after the flame was due to be lit at Mt Olympia, so the plan was scrapped.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
