ATHENS, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Milano-Cortina Winter Games organisers received the Olympic flame on Thursday in a ceremony at Athens' Panathenaic Stadium,as they prepare for a 63-day torch relay designed to spark excitement acrossItaly before the Olympics in February.
In a scaled-down event due to heavy rain warnings, as was the case when the flame was lit in ancient Olympia last week, Milano-Cortina Games organising chief Giovanni Malago was handed the flame inside the vast marble-clad stadium just over two months before the opening ceremony on February 6.
"Italy is proud of its Olympic heritage ... as we get ready to write the nextchapter in our Olympic story," said Malago, with only a handful of officials and spectators present due to the weather restrictions on a dry, yet overcast morning in the Greek capital.
Italy, a winter sports powerhouse, last hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006 with the Turin Games.
"It will be an incredible 63-day adventure," Malago said. "After two decades of waiting,the Olympic flame is returning to Italy."
Italian Olympic tennis doubles champion Jasmine Paolini was one of the last torchbearers carrying the flame into the Panathenaic Stadium following a nine-day Greek relay after the lighting on November 26 in ancient Olympia.
The flame will travel to Rome later on Thursday and set off on December 6 from the city's Stadio dei Marmi for the start of a domestic 12,000-km journey that will takein all 20 regions plus 110 provinces and passthrough 60 Italian cities and 300 towns with a total of 10,001 torchbearers.
The Italian relay will take in famous landmarks including the Colosseum in Rome and the Grand Canal in Venice, with stops in southern cities such as Palermo and Naples to spark excitement in areas where winter sports are not as prominent.
It will reachCortina D’Ampezzo on January 26 – exactly 70 years after the opening ceremony of the 1956 Games at the same venue - and will finish on February 6 at the opening ceremony at Milan's San Siro stadium.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Ken Ferris)
