OLYMPICS: Italy receives Olympic flame for Milano Winter Games ahead of relay

Olympic Flame Arrives in Athens Ahead of Milano-Cortina Winter Games. Milano-Cortina Winter Games organizers received the Olympic flame on Thursday in a ceremony at Athens’ Panathenaic Stadium, marking the start of a 63-day torch relay designed to generate excitement across Italy ahead of the February Olympics.

The event was scaled down due to heavy rain warnings, similar to when the flame was lit last week in ancient Olympia. Milano-Cortina Games organizing chief Giovanni Malagò was handed the flame inside the vast marble-clad stadium just over two months before the opening ceremony on February 6.

“Italy is proud of its Olympic heritage … as we get ready to write the next chapter in our Olympic story,” Malagò said, with only a small number of officials and spectators present due to weather restrictions on a dry but overcast morning in Athens.

Italy, a winter sports powerhouse, last hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006 with the Turin Games.

“It will be an incredible 63-day adventure,” Malagò added. “After two decades of waiting, the Olympic flame is returning to Italy.”

Italian Olympic tennis doubles champion Jasmine Paolini was among the final torchbearers carrying the flame into the Panathenaic Stadium following a nine-day Greek relay that began with the lighting in ancient Olympia on November 26.

The flame will travel to Rome later on Thursday and will depart on December 6 from Stadio dei Marmi, beginning a domestic 12,000-kilometer journey across all 20 Italian regions, 110 provinces, 60 cities, and 300 towns, involving a total of 10,001 torchbearers.

The relay will pass famous landmarks such as the Colosseum in Rome and the Grand Canal in Venice, with stops in southern cities like Palermo and Naples to engage communities where winter sports are less prominent.

The flame is scheduled to reach Cortina d’Ampezzo on January 26—exactly 70 years after the opening ceremony of the 1956 Games at the same venue—and will conclude at Milan’s San Siro Stadium on February 6 during the opening ceremony. -Karolos Grohmann/Reuters Credit: Remo Casilli