Today was day four of the torch being back in the province and its fourth community celebration – Camrose. Yesterday was a day off for the torch and the massive train that travels along with it, and the job that VANOC (Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee) is doing to bring the Olympic spirit into communities throughout this country is really impressive.
The day off was a great opportunity for everyone involved to take a breather, regroup and take stock of what we had been witnessed to so far – most of which is truly amazing.
Wednesday night, Brandon Boucher, SnowSeekers’ director of Photography, and I got the chance to see the relay up close and personal as it made its way through the streets of Edmonton. It wasn’t intentional.
We were at the Parliament Buildings (there’s an excellent tour you can take virtually anytime) and as the torch made its way out from the celebration they had on its steps, we decided that it would be a good idea to follow it up the road to bring you the best possible video of it.
As we made our way back out onto the street, we started to run alongside the bearer keeping pace right to the end of his run which allowed us to witness the passing of the flame to the next torch bearer – which was really, really cool. Than the next bearer started to run and he was moving fast – fast enough that we had some challenges just trying to keep up but we weren’t letting that flame out of our site.
VANOC has about 10 support vehicles which travel with the flame (stay tuned to future blog posts and we’ll bring you a look at the vehicles). As each torch bearer is finished his or her leg, VANOC picks them up and bring them all up to the main community celebration, which in this case, was Edmonton’s Sir Winston Churchill Square in the centre of the city.
If you are as fascinated by the operation as myself, have a go to www.vancouver2010.com and click on Olympic Torch Relay where you can even find a cool map laying out all the stops.
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