If any country "can surpass Russia's achievement of sending the Olympic torch on a spacewalk," Sochi 2014 Winter Games Organizing Committee President Dmitry Chernyshenko "would like to see them try," according to R-SPORT.
In "what has already become one of the most enduring images" associated with February's Winter Games, two Russian cosmonauts "took an unlit torch into open space on Saturday and photographed themselves holding it up with a glowing Earth hanging majestically behind them."
Screen grabs of cosmonaut Oleg Kotov "holding up the red and silver torch were splashed across the front pages of leading media outlets in the hours that followed, with millions following the event live over the Internet." Chernyshenko:
"We have shown the entire world what we are capable of very vividly. If anyone can do better, let them try" (R-SPORT, 11/10). The AP reported video streamed by NASA showed Kotov and Sergei Ryazanskiy "carrying the unlit torch of the Sochi Games, which bobbed weightlessly at the end of a tether in a darkness dotted by stars." The two "gingerly maneuvered to take photos of the torch against the background of the planet, the orb's edge glowing with sunrise" (AP, 11/10).
