Word: torch
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Olympic flame, kindled at the ruins of Olympia in Greece, arrived in New York City twelve hours later aboard a U.S. Air Force jet. It was a dispiriting day for pageantry: raw, windy, drizzly. But as runners started the torch on its zigzag, 15,000-kilometer journey across 33 of the 50 American states, the dark skies seemed only to intensify the symbolic glow. The second runner, 91-year-old Abel Kiviat, silver medalist in the 1,500-meter race in the 1912 Olympics, had no inkling that anything was amiss as he ended his appointed kilometer...
...course, neither can nor should give any guarantees against demonstrations or defections. To answer any legitimate Soviet worries, however, Ueberroth and Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Spanish diplomat who heads the International Olympic Committee, flew from the Manhattan torch-carrying ceremony to Washington for a prearranged meeting with Ronald Reagan. It was already too late: even as they waited at New York City's La Guardia Airport for their chartered jet, they got the first indication of an actual Soviet pullout, news that was confirmed when they reached Washington. Nonetheless, they received from the President a letter pledging strict U.S. adherence...
...headquarters building, a former Hughes helicopter plant nicknamed "the hangar." Inside, they were ordered not to discuss the situation with anyone and no outsiders were allowed in the building unless they had previous appointments. Mayor Thomas Bradley, speaking by phone from New York, where he too was attending the torch-carrying ceremony, pronounced himself "bitterly disappointed." He and other officials repeatedly stressed the wan hope that the Soviets could be persuaded to reconsider; Bradley hinted that he might undertake a mission to Moscow. The dominant reaction, however, was that, Soviets or no Soviets, the Games would go on. Said L.A.O.O.C...
...SMOG of international political idiocy descends upon the Los Angeles Olympics, cries have arisen that it's time to extinguish. Baron de Coubertin's torch once and for all. Such arguments strike an increasingly responsive chord, indeed, the last Games to be left unscathed by the non-athletic tug of war between rival states took place in 1968. Since then, we've seen the massacre of 11 Israelis in Munich, the African boycott of Montreal, the U.S. no-show in Moscow, and now, the big nyet from Chernenko and Co. Nor do prospects for the future look good...
Keeping the flame lighted after it arrives on U.S. soil may be tricky. On practice runs in March, the flame kept going out. The maker of the torch has switched to a higher-grade propane, but as a precaution, a second Olympic flame will be kept burning in a lantern along the route...