Waiting For the Olympic Torch

The Olympic Torch is due to arrive in Owen Sound this evening, after a very cold and blustery-snowy day in central Ontario. We're here to cheer with the crowds because our personal Olympic excitement is staring to burn. We leave next week for our jobs at the Games and suddenly we're in prepping mode.

But my thoughts are straying to when I carried the Torch --- twice --- and envy those on the route tonight. The first time was for the Montreal Games July 1976, before the internet and big TV coverage and major sponsors. It seems so primitive now, just a couple of vans on the backroads of eastern Ontario. We were required to run at a steady pace for one kilometre.

Then for the 2004 Athens Games the Torch was run around the world (no longer allowed) in all former Olympic cities. So there I was in Montreal on June 21, 2004. Easy to remember the date because it was both the first day of summer and Father's Day! I always felt my dad ran with me that day. Coca-Cola sponsored me because I had been a Torch bearer for Montreal 1976 and they thought it was a great nostalgia story, the timelessness of the Olympic spirit.

Torch bearers are dropped off at their start points, in full uniform and with an unlit torch, in groups on school buses. On my bus were various past Olympic champions, Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau, and a teenage girl whose mother had arranged her run as a graduation present!

When the Torch is in sight, the heart starts pounding --- you hope you don't mess it up, you hope you don't miss the moment. Then you're off (this time only 800 metres was required), surrounded by 4 escort runners and cheered on by thousands of onlookers. It is truly some of the most exciting minutes you can imagine. You wave, you smile hysterically, you break into tears at the thought you are sharing a ritual from ancient Greece.

Too soon the flame is passed on to the next runner, but you are swarmed by families whose kids want to hold the Torch, want to pose with it for posterity. Thankfully, Pat was there to take pictures like a crazed sports photographer.

Torch bearers this time only have to cover 300 metres. Even so, tonight as the Torch is lit for its overnight stay at the Town Hall, we'll be thinking back to that beautiful sunny day in Montreal ---- and forward to that day next February in cold Vancouver when we again rendezvous with the ancients.