Olympic torch to visit previous summer hosts

ATHENS, Greece — The flame for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens will make an unprecedented global journey from the Olympics' ancient birthplace that will include visits to South America and Africa.

The torch also will stop in Istanbul, where dozens of people died in recent terrorist bombings. The attack in neighboring Turkey heightened security fears in Athens for the Aug. 13-29 Olympics.

"The ancient and modern symbolisms of the flame — the values of peace, truce, security, brotherhood, cooperation — are more relevant today than ever," Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, head of the Athens Organizing Committee, said Wednesday.

Following its traditional lighting at Ancient Olympia, birthplace of the games 3,000 years ago, the torch will pass through all former Summer Olympic cities — from Berlin, where the torch relay was first introduced in 1936, to Sydney.

The torch will be in the United States on June 16-19, stopping in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta and New York.

Organizers said they will propose to the International Olympic Committee that the torch be lighted March 25, which is Greek independence day and the day on the Julian calendar the first modern Olympics opened in Athens in 1896. Under the Gregorian — the calendar used today by most of the world — the Athens Games opened April 6, 1896.

Under the proposal, to be considered by the IOC today, the flame will make a seven-day journey through southern Greece and will then burn outside the all-marble stadium that hosted the first modern games until June 4, when it will travel to Australia.

The 2000 host will begin the international stage of the relay and the first runner in Australia will be 400-meter Sydney gold medalist Cathy Freeman, who lighted the Olympic flame in Sydney.

The flame will then visit Asia — passing through Beijing, host of the 2008 Games — and Africa before crossing the Atlantic to the Americas. Then it will zigzag through Europe to return home, ending in Athens Aug. 13.

More than 3,600 torchbearers will carry the flame on its global journey, for 78 days outside Greece and covering about 48,500 miles. It will travel by air and sea, as well as by car, bicycle, motorcycle and wheelchair.

Stops will include some cities that bid for the 2004 Olympics: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the relay's maiden visit to South America; Cape Town, South Africa, during the flame's first trip to that continent; and Istanbul.

The Greek leg will last 35 days and pass through 170 cities and towns in Greece.

While Berlin introduced the torch relay, Amsterdam actually lit the first flame for its 1928 Games. A flame also burned during the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

The torch is lit before each Olympics by the sun's rays in a concave mirror in a ceremony at Ancient Olympia.