05.10 Olympic Flame Passes to Russian Delegation for Sochi Games
ATHENS, October 5 (R-Sport) - The Olympic flame was handed over Saturday to the organizers of next year's Winter Games in Sochi, ahead of a 123-day and 65,000-kilometer journey across Russia.
The Russians, led by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, received the flame in a ceremony at the Panathenaic stadium in Athens, which hosted athletics in ancient times and held the first modern Olympics in 1896.
"Today the Olympic flame will arrive on Russian Federation territory, at the Russian embassy in Greece, and tomorrow it will arrive in Moscow, and from that day Russia will be the Olympic capital," Kozak said.
The flame was lit Sunday at Ancient Olympia using the sun's rays and toured 33 Greek towns and cities before the handover.
On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin will receive the flame on Moscow's Red Square before it begins its journey across the host nation.
The Moscow leg will last two days and involve around 300 torchbearers, including hockey legend Vyacheslav Fetisov and other Olympic champions like figure skater Irina Rodnina, gymnast Svetlana Khorkina, as well as Russian Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov.
The relay will then veer north to St. Petersburg before flying east and eventually looping around the Kamchatka Peninsula, down to Vladivostok and back across southern Siberia via Lake Baikal, the worlds largest freshwater lake.
