LA Games to bring Olympic torch relay to all 50 states
by Lisa Riley Roche deseret news · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- The Olympic torch relay will visit all 50 states before LA's 2028 Games.
- The flame will start in Atlanta, honoring its 1996 Summer Olympics conclusion.
- Details on the route and torchbearer nominations will be announced next year.
LOS ANGELES — The Olympic torch relay is returning to the U.S. for the first time since the 2002 Winter Games in Utah.
The route for the flame lit in ancient Olympia, Greece, to the opening ceremonies of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles will start in Atlanta and pass through all 50 states, organizers announced this week.
"Every Olympic Games begins with a single flame, and carrying that flame to Los Angeles is an honor and privilege that we'll share with every corner of the country," Casey Wasserman, the LA28 organizing committee's chair and president, said in a statement.
No specifics were released about the torch relay, other than it will come through every state and begin with the flame's "official U.S. welcome in Atlanta, a nod to where it ended its last U.S. Summer Olympics journey at the Atlanta 1996 Games."
The Georgia city is also home to longtime Olympic sponsor Coca-Cola. The rest of the torch relay route won't be released until next year, along with information on the nomination process for what will be thousands of torchbearers, the Los Angeles Times reported.
At Atlanta's 1996 Summer Games, the flame that had traveled around the country, including to Utah, was passed for the last time to boxing legend Muhammad Ali. His arm shook from Parkinson's disease as he ignited a stadium cauldron to signal the start of the Olympics.
The torch relay that brought the flame to the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium for the opening of the 2002 Winter Games also started in Atlanta and traveled through 46 states. Lighting the cauldron that year were members of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" men's hockey team.
Several Utahns participated in this year's Olympic torch relay ahead of Italy's Milan Cortina Winter Games, including Gail Miller, co-founder of the Larry H. Miller Company and the chair of the family foundation contributing $20 million to Utah's 2034 Winter Games.
Fraser Bullock, the president and executive chair of the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, said work is already underway "with the LA28 team to ensure we have a great torch relay experience here in our communities."
Bullock, who also ran in Italy's torch relay, said Utah organizers "are incredibly excited for the opportunity to celebrate the spirit of the Games in 2028 to help fuel our enthusiasm looking forward to 2034 ."
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.