Light My Fire: BOCOG Releases Olympic Torch Design, Route

Beijing’s Torch Will Make 85,000-Mile Journey

In releasing the route for the Olympic torch relay for the ’08 Summer Games Thursday, BOCOG also unveiled the official torch designed by Lenovo, one of the Olympic Torch Relay partners. Lenovo is the first TOP sponsor to design a torch. The torch features a series of red, cloud-shaped swirls wrapping around a bright silver base color. More than 30 Lenovo designers spent ten months working on the torch. The official torch lighting will take place in Greece in March ’08. Other sponsors of the relay, which will take 130 days and pass through five continents on its nearly 85,000-mile journey, include Coca-Cola and Samsung (Tripp Mickle, SportsBusiness Journal).

STAY AWAY: REUTERS’ Nick Mulvenney reported the route officially sets self-governing Taiwan as the stop before Hong Kong. The Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee said in a statement it was "an attempt by China to engineer the relay route so that Chinese Taipei is included in China's domestic relay route. ... We resolutely reject this” (REUTERS, 4/26). In L.A., Ching-Ching Ni reports the Chinese government “already considers it a political compromise” that the route goes to Taipei via Ho Chi Minh City before heading back to Hong Kong and China. The uproar “underscores the political sensitivities involved” with China hosting the Olympics, which the country sees as a “coming-of-age event crucial to its international standing” (L.A. TIMES, 4/27).