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for the olympic flame match Cortina Winter Games formally handed over Italian Organizers on Thursday held the all-marble stadium at Central… Athens Where the first modern Olympics were held almost 130 years ago.
The flame will travel from Athens ItalyWhere it will begin a 63-day, 12,000-kilometre relay through all 110 Italian provinces before reaching Milan’s San Siro stadium for the opening ceremony on February 6.
Italy will host the torch for the first time in 20 years and 10,000 torchbearers have been organised.
“Standing in this historic stadium is an inspiring reminder of the honor we have been given and the priceless treasure we will take home with us,” Milan Cortina organizing committee president Giovanni Malago said before receiving the flame.
Forecasts of heavy rain in Athens kept large crowds away and organizers announced the event would be shortened. But the rain held off until the end, a bit of sunshine filtered through the heavy dark clouds, and the few brave spectators who came were able to enjoy performances by Greek and Italian singers and children’s choirs in the stadium that had staged the first modern Games in 1896.
After spending the night burning in a cauldron outside Greece’s most famous site, the 5th-century BC Parthenon temple atop the Acropolis, the flame was carried to the Panathenaic Stadium by Greek water polo player Elena Xenakis, who lit another cauldron in the stadium with the Greece women’s national water polo team.
The flame was lit using a concave mirror to focus the sun’s rays onto a torch in a highly ceremonial display on November 26 at Ancient Olympia, the site of the ancient games that inspired the modern Olympic movement. The idea of the Olympic flame and torch relay was the result of Greek-German cooperation and began before the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. This tradition has been going on since then.
On Thursday, Greece’s Olympic Committee president Isidoros Kouvellos handed the flame to Malago.
“We can’t change the entire world in 16 days of competition, but we can show in 16 days what the world can look like when respect comes first,” Cuvelos said.
These are the third Winter Games to be hosted by Italy but cost overruns and construction setbacks have hampered preparations.
The Games featured 116 medal competitions, the introduction of ski mountaineering, the return of NHL players to Olympic ice hockey, and higher female participation.
A separate flame for the March 6-15 Winter Paralympics will be lit on February 24 at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England, the birthplace of the Paralympic movement.
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AP Winter Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics