Milan-Cortina: Flame looks to Olympus prologue for Tofane and Bianco
LAMIA - Leaving Thessaloniki and western Macedonia behind, the Flame sets off towards Athens, its final destination. But not before paying homage to two iconic peaks: Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, with a stop at its foot, at Elassona, and Mount Pelion, the (home of Jason the centaur who took care of Achilles) with a stop and ceremony at the village of Portaria. Then rest overnight at Lamia, the crossroads of central Greece, before the great leap south to the Acropolis of Athens.
Perhaps some of the organisers of the Greek journey of the Flame may have even entertained the idea of carrying the torch, if not all the way up to the 2918 metres of Punta Mytikas then a little further down, to one of the more accessible of the more than 50 peaks that make up the Olympus group such as Gennaros, Agios Antonios, Skala or Skolio.
The Flame then greeted the snowy slopes of Olympus, a more than auspicious prologue to the success of Milano Cortina. To carry a lit Flame to such a high summit is no mean feat. It was not without some difficulty that the Chinese managed to carry the torch to Everest in 2008, in what was not so much a tribute to the values of Olympism as a test of military strength and assertion of full sovereignty over the area, which also includes the disputed Tibet.
The first real ascent at altitude for an Olympic torch was in 1924 for the Chamonix Winter Olympics when the Flame ascended Mont Blanc from the Aguille de Midi. Easier is the climb up Mont Ventoux in the French Alps (famous for the mountain stages of the Tour de France) ascended by the Flame for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
As for the Milan Cortina Flame, on 12 January it will again climb the 4806-metre roof of Europe on Mont Blanc, before touching down in Châtillon and stopping in Aosta. The following day, another ascent at altitude, reaching the 4,554-metre Punta Gnifetti on Monte Rosa, before heading back down to Ivrea. In Cortina on 26 January, they ski down the Eugenio Monti slope on the Tofane and climb from Misurina to the Auronzo refuge of the Three Peaks of Lavaredo. After all, it is the Winter Olympics.
