On September 29, 2013, the Olympic torch relay started in Olympia, Greece, leading up to the start of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. On October 5, in Athens, the fire will be handed over to the Russian delegation, which will deliver it to Moscow, and then the torch will travel through Russia.
Relay organization
The route of the Olympic flame in Russia was presented by the Sochi 2014 organizing committee a year before the start of the relay. It was announced that the torch will be in the hands of athletes, on trains, cars, airplanes, on the Russian troika and reindeer teams. Initially, it was also assumed that during the trip, the Olympic flame will visit the deepest lake in the world - Baikal, pass through the highest European mountain peak - Elbrus. In addition, it was planned to send fire even into space. For all the time, the torch will travel over 65 thousand kilometers, and 130 million people from 2,900 settlements will be able to watch the relay.
The relay in Russia will begin on October 7 in Moscow and will run until the start of the Olympics on February 7 and its final destination in Sochi. Representatives of the Olympic Games Organizing Committee claim that the relay will be not only the longest, but also the longest in history - 123 days, during which the torchbearers will carry the Olympic flame through the capitals of 83 constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
Relay route
From Moscow and Krasnogorsk near Moscow, counterclockwise fire will be carried around the Moscow region, through cities such as Tver, Smolensk, Kaluga, Tula, Ryazan, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kostroma and Yaroslavl. After that, the torch will be delivered to the north-west of the country, from where - to the Far East and northern regions. Then, through the Volga region, the fire will return to the central part of Russia, it will be carried through Tambov, then Lipetsk, Orel, Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh and Volgograd.
At the final stage of the relay, the torch of the Olympic flame will travel to Sochi by motor rally from Elista, passing through 10 southern cities, until it reaches its destination in Sochi on February 7, 2014. In total, more than 14 thousand torchbearers will be involved in the relay.
Especially for the relay race, the organizing committee purchased 16 thousand torches, which were produced at the Krasnoyarsk machine-building plant. The cost of each torch is 12,942 rubles. The torch body consists of an aluminum alloy with a finely dispersed matte texture, and the design allows the fire not to go out even in bad weather. The upper part of the case is inlaid with the emblems of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
