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The Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Torch Relay, led by cyclist Lance Armstrong, starts on December 4, 2001, in Atlanta, Georgia, where the torch last burned for the 1996 Olympic Games. The torch, carried by more than 11,000 torchbearers, will travel over 13,500 miles through 125 cities in 46 states. It will arrive in Salt Lake City, Utah, on February, 8, 2002, for the start of the Winter Games. The official 2002 Winter Games site was unavailable when we searched on Yahoo! for the "2002 olympic torch relay," but web page matches led us to abundant information from sponsors Coke and Chevy, as well as news stories from a variety of local
sources. We learned that the application deadline had just passed for nominating inspirational individuals as torchbearers in their communities. Following Olympic tradition, the torch will be lit in Greece, then it will be delivered to Atlanta by Delta Airlines, where it will begin its transcontinental journey through Alabama, down Florida's Atlantic coast, over to Texas, then east again, spending the last days of 2001 in New England, and celebrating the New Year in Buffalo, New York. In January, the torch travels across the Midwest and into the Plains, down through the Southwest, north through California to the Pacific Northwest, with a jog over to Juneau, Alaska, and a final loop through the Mountain
West before heading to Salt Lake. We found a state-by-state itinerary from the folks at Coke, and a downloadable screensaver that maps the relay route from Chevrolet. A press release on the official Chevy site also informed us that "the Olympic Flame will travel by Chevrolet vehicles, airplane, train, ship, dog sled, skier, horse-drawn sleigh, snowmobile, ice skaters, prairie schooner and other unique modes of transportation" as well as human torchbearers. Happy Trails, Torch!
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