Fueling the flame

One of the additional runners selected after Sept. 11 was 12-year-old Jordan Grine, who carried the torch on Jan. 2 in Columbus, Ohio. He represented his 10-year-old brother, Luke, who was too young to join the relay.

Shortly after the World Trade Center attacks, Luke saw a news story on TV telling how the firefighters searching through the debris in New York City sometimes had bleeding hands because they didn't have enough gloves. He told his mother he wanted to get gloves to send them.

The next day when he came home from school, he found that his mother had made up fliers asking people to donate gloves. On Friday he distributed them. .

Then, he and Jordan took a wagon and collected gloves - more than 400 pairs. The local Cub Scouts joined in and soon collected another 800 pairs. Luke and his father flew to New York to deliver them to several fire stations.

Luke was disappointed that he couldn't run in the relay himself, but excited for his brother. Jordan's entire sixth-grade class - along with his family and many of his friends - came out to cheer him on.

"It was pretty amazing," he said of the run. "It was really cold, but the sidewalks were full of people all the way along, and they were all cheering."

Jordan's gymnastics club provided the funds so that he could purchase the torch he carried. (All torchbearers were given the opportunity to buy - for $335 - the torches they carried.) He's not sure where he'll keep his torch yet. "I thought about keeping it in my room, but maybe it should go in the living room," he says.

It's a memory he wants to share with everyone.

Sharon Huntington contributed to this article.

The Olympic torch is visiting 46 states, 125 major cities, and covering 13,500 miles over 65 days.

Some other interesting torch information:

The Olympic torch travels an average of 208 miles per 12-hour day.

Torchbearers are accompanied by one of about 4,300 support runners - each of whom will run about three times as far as each torchbearer.

White uniforms are for torchbearers; blue uniforms are for their escorts.

Anyone who carries a torch can buy it for $335.

Each torchbearer travels 0.2 miles and was given the choice to walk, jog, or run.

The Olympic flame is ignited by the sun's rays in Olympia, Greece, and is kept in a lantern that travels with the relay.

People aren't the only ones to transport the torch. En route to Salt Lake City, it is also being carried by car, plane, train, boat, dog-sled, skier, horse-drawn sleigh, snowmobile, ice skaters, and covered wagon.

The nationwide selection process to choose 11,500 torchbearers was led by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

All nomination forms for the relay event were completed online between March 1 and May 15, 2001. Ninety-six task forces reviewed a total of 210,000 short essays.

The 2002 relay is actually scaled down compared to some previous productions. For the 2000 Sydney, Australia, Olympics, the torch traveled farther (37,500 miles), longer (120 days), and through more countries (14) than any preceding relay.

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics had the most torchbearers: 101,839.

The torch relay is sponsored by Chevrolet and Coca-Cola.

For more information, visit the official website for this year's Olympic Games, www. saltlake2002.com.

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