By Elvira Pollina
MILAN (Reuters) – The torches that will carry the Olympic flame for the 2026 Winter Games and Paralympics were unveiled on Monday in Milan and at a parallel event in the Italian pavilion at Expo 2025 in the Japanese city of Osaka.
Made from recycled aluminium, the torches have been styled in two different versions, blue-coloured for the Olympics and bronze for the Paralympics.
Former cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo and Paralympic fencing star Bebe Vio, both double Olympic gold medallists, brought the torches into a Milan theatre.
“It’s very easy to carry on and it’s easy to handle,” said Belmondo, who lit the Olympic cauldron at the 2006 Games in Turin, when Italy last hosted the Winter Games.
Styled by Carlo Ratti Associati, a Turin-based design firm, the surface of each torch is intended to reflect the landscape it will cross during its relay, and to put the Olympic flame itself in the spotlight, organisers said.
“The torch is spectacular, beautiful, the embodiment of Italian design genius,” said Giovanni Malago, Italy’s National Olympic Committee president.
Milan and the town of Cortina d’Ampezzo, one of Italy’s most famous ski resorts, are the main hosts of the Games, which run from February 6 to 22 next year. The Paralympics will follow the following month.
The torch will be lit at Greece’s ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympics, on November 26, marking the countdown to the Games.
It is scheduled to arrive in Rome at the beginning of December and will continue its relay across Italy before reaching Milan for the lighting of the cauldron at the opening ceremony.
Aside from Milan and Cortina – which are more than 400 km (250 miles) apart – events will be staged at five other locations, including Bormio, where the men’s Alpine skiing races will take place.
(Reporting by Elvira Pollina; Editing by Keith Weir and Rachna Uppal)
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