Bump, clunk! Olympic flame gets a rough ride

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

QUEENSTOWN - It's the stuff of nightmares - the eyes of the world are on you as you proudly bear the Olympic flame ... and it jolts out of its special holder and crashes to the ground.

But 13-year-old Queenstown mountainbiker Scarlett Hagen overcame the embarrassment yesterday, replaced the torch and carried on pedalling.

Scarlett was the fourth person to be given the torch as it began its relay down Coronet Peak at the start of a three-day trek through New Zealand before it goes on to Australia.

As she rode down the winding road from the skifield, her bike hit a bump. The torch jumped out of the holder fitted to her bicycle and clunked on to the icy tarseal.

But the flame kept burning, and security guards who were following her rushed to pick up the aluminium torch before its self-extinguishing system clicked in.

Without flinching, Scarlett helped to put the torch back into its mount and carried on down the mountain without further incident.

One of the relay organisers from Australia, Katarina Vidovich, praised the teenager and said the mishap was not her fault.

"It just shows how much engineering technology has gone into the torch that it kept on burning," she said.

Scarlett has not had much luck on two wheels lately. She was leading the national downhill mountainbike championships when her bike chain fell off.

The tumble was the flame's second mishap as it set off on its journey. Earlier, it was snuffed out in the mist on the mountain after Winter Olympic silver medallist Annelise Coberger passed it to fellow skier Paddy Strain.

A guard on a snow-plough behind her quickly reignited the torch with the mother flame, kept in a gold lantern.

The flame did not die again as it was passed between 90 torchbearers in Queenstown and Christchurch.

But it was kept waiting when its own special plane had to turn around on the Queenstown runway after it was discovered that a gas canister had not been removed from one of the torches.

Despite a few flickers, the flame's first day in New Zealand was a blazing success.

Around 3000 spectators braved the chill on Queenstown's snowy slopes in the morning, and thousands lined the winding route from Christchurch Airport to Cathedral Square at dusk.

The Olympics – a Herald series

Official Sydney 2000 web site