Eddie the Eagle’ Edwards is set to have a hand in next February’s Winter Olympics — but this time he will remain firmly rooted to the ground. Edwards, a ski jumping plasterer who shot to fame at the 1988 Games in Calgary despite finishing last in both events in which he entered, will carry the Olympic flame in Winnipeg on January 7.

Greek officials were left red-faced after it emerged that former Olympic hurdling champion Fani Halkia, banned for doping, had run a leg of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games torch relay in Greece.

The Greek Association of Olympic winners, who had included Halkia on a list of proposed torchbearers sent to the Greek Olympic Committee, said the blunder was down to human error.

“This is an honest mistake and nothing else,” association president Giorgos Sigalas said. “It was my mistake for not checking the names of the list that was drafted here and was sent to the committee.”

Greece handed the Olympic flame to Canada, hosts of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, on Thursday for the longest domestic torch relay ever ahead of the February 12 opening ceremony.

The peaceful handover ceremony in Athens’ Panathenian stadium, site of the first modern Olympics in 1896, concluded an eight-day torch relay in Greece.

High Priestess Maria Nafpliotou, an actress, and priestesses holding olive-tree branches performed a ritual surrounding the altar, after 18-year-old figure skater Niki Georgiadou brought the flame into the windy stadium.

The Olympic flame for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver has been lit.

The sun shone just enough over the fallen temples at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics on Thursday for a Greek actress in a pagan priestess’ white gown and sandals to focus its rays on a silver torch using a concave mirror.

The flame will burn at the Vancouver Games in February, following a torch relay across Canada and a shorter run in Greece.

Bad weather disrupted the ceremony for the 2000 Sydney Summer Games, and the past three Winter Olympics — in Turin in 2006, Salt Lake City in 2002 and Nagano in 1998.

http://www.vancouver2010.com/