Regina turned Victoria Avenue into the world's longest shinny game to greet the torch.
Here's what some of the torchbearers said about their experience:
With a mile-wide grin and hoisting her Olympic torch high, 18-year-old University of Regina student Callie Morris waved her red-mittened-hand to the masses gathered before lighting the cauldron just after 7 p.m. to cheers. “Stick with what you love,” she told the crowd at the torch celebration. Morris, a hockey and baseball player and wrestler, added that because she “stuck” with sports, she was able to be an Olympic torchbearer.. . .
RCMP Assistant Commissioner Roger Brown...carried it briefly into Mosaic Stadium, home of the Saskatchewan Roughriders. “There’s a sense of pride whenever we wear our red serge and you get to represent your country, but to do it in this fashion, tonight and with the troops behind us — unreal,” Brown said . . .
...a number of the torchbearers...became instant celebrities as spectators lined up to touch their torch or get a photograph with its bearer.
Kim Smith ... recalled attending an event about six years ago where Olympic gold-winning curler Joan McCusker... placed her gold medal around Smith’s neck. That “unbelievable” experience inspired Smith to take up running. In the last three years, she’s run two half-marathons and plans to run another this year. When she was handed the torch, “your heart gets so big, so overwhelmed to carry a flame that’s going to end up in Vancouver,” said Smith, who was glad to be “a tiny part of history.”
Rick Minett, who was a torchbearer in Melville earlier in the day, was also a torchbearer for the 1988 Olympics where he had a spot in the relay in Toronto. “It’s like getting struck by lightening,” . . . said Minett, who competed in the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii this fall. Minett was particularly proud of how the torch event united Canadians.
An hour after Morris lit the cauldron, the flame was placed in a lantern to continue its journey, and fireworks erupted behind the stage. As music blared and fireworks lit up the sky, Bana Goldsmith stood waving a large Canadian flag tied to a hockey stick, that he used earlier to play in the world’s longest shinny game in downtown Regina. “I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks,” he said.
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