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Japan Times
15-04-2025
- Sport
- Japan Times
Winter Games torches unveiled in joint ceremony in Milan and Osaka
The 2026 Winter and Paralympic torches were unveiled at a dual event held in Milan and Osaka on Monday as the countdown continues for next year's Milano Cortina Games. Designed by the Carlo Ratti Associati studio in Turin, the torches were presented for the first time in a theater at Milan's Triennale art and design museum and the Italian pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka. In Milan, former cross-country skiing Olympic gold winner Stefania Belmondo and Beatrice Vio, a two-time Paralympic wheelchair fencing champion, brought out the torches which are made from recycled aluminum. Paralympic champion Martina Caironi and Carolina Kostner, a figure skating bronze medalist at the 2014 Sochi Games, were in Osaka. Weighing 1,060 grams and made in Italy, the Olympic torch is light blue while the Paralympic torch is bronze, and the design allows them to be reused and refilled up to 10 times. The torch's burner will run on bio-LPG, a renewable liquid gas made mainly from waste, such as used cooking oil and animal fats, and its flute-like shape is designed to both highlight the flame and keep it away from the athletes. Vio joked with the audience that the torches used for last year's Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris "practically went in my face." "Thanks for being concerned about people's faces!" she said. As per tradition, the Olympic torch will be lit at the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece, on Nov. 26 before being taken to Athens for the handover ceremony, scheduled for Dec. 4. The flame will begin its journey around Italy in Rome two days later, snaking across the country until it arrives in Milan on Feb. 5, one day before the opening ceremony in the Mediterranean nation's economic capital. The opening ceremony will be held at the iconic San Siro stadium, which usually hosts matches for Italian football giants Inter Milan and AC Milan. After the official kickoff, the Games will take place over a vast area of northern Italy stretching from Milan to ski resort Cortina d'Ampezzo near the border with Austria.
Reuters
14-04-2025
- Sport
- Reuters
Italy 2026 Winter Games, Paralympics torches unveiled in Milan
MILAN, April 14 (Reuters) - The torches that will carry the Olympic flame for the 2026 Winter Games and Paralympics were unveiled on Monday in Milan and at a parallel event in the Italian pavilion at Expo 2025 in the Japanese city of Osaka. Made from recycled aluminium, the torches have been styled in two different versions, blue-coloured for the Olympics and bronze for the Paralympics. Former cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo and Paralympic fencing star Bebe Vio, both double Olympic gold medallists, brought the torches into a Milan theatre. "It's very easy to carry on and it's easy to handle," said Belmondo, who lit the Olympic cauldron at the 2006 Games in Turin, when Italy last hosted the Winter Games. Styled by Carlo Ratti Associati, a Turin-based design firm, the surface of each torch is intended to reflect the landscape it will cross during its relay, and to put the Olympic flame itself in the spotlight, organisers said. "The torch is spectacular, beautiful, the embodiment of Italian design genius," said Giovanni Malago, Italy's National Olympic Committee president. Milan and the town of Cortina d'Ampezzo, one of Italy's most famous ski resorts, are the main hosts of the Games, which run from February 6 to 22 next year. The Paralympics will follow the following month. The torch will be lit at Greece's ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympics, on November 26, marking the countdown to the Games. It is scheduled to arrive in Rome at the beginning of December and will continue its relay across Italy before reaching Milan for the lighting of the cauldron at the opening ceremony. Aside from Milan and Cortina - which are more than 400 km (250 miles) apart - events will be staged at five other locations, including Bormio, where the men's Alpine skiing races will take place.
