L.A. Kicks Off Olympic Torch Run Across U.S.

With hoopla, hurrahs and a strong dose of civic pride, Los Angeles on Saturday welcomed the Olympic flame and kicked off a 15,000-mile relay, passing the torch through a cowboy museum, a taekwondo fest and a mariachi stage on the colorful first leg of its journey across the U.S. to the Summer Games in Atlanta.

Taking a zigzag route designed to show off neighborhoods from Griffith Park to Little Tokyo and from Burbank to Santa Monica, the torch relay carried a heavy symbolic burden. William Payne, chairman of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, said it would “draw our nation together in a celebration of all that is good in the life that we share.”

But it also proved just a good excuse to party.

More than a thousand people swarmed outside the Los Angeles Coliseum, host to the 1932 and 1984 Olympics, to cheer the flame with a standing ovation during the relay’s opening ceremony. Waving flags and swigging free Coke, courtesy of the relay sponsor, Rene Rougeau blessed the event with a 10-year-old’s highest accolade: “It was cool.”

His buddy, Chris Terry, was a little more reserved. After watching former Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson tear down the course on the first leg of the relay, Chris said he would never volunteer for such a job. “Too much pressure,” he muttered, shuddering. “What if you trip and fall?”

Johnson, who at 60 still looks like an Olympic contender, never stumbled.

Yet as the relay wound through Los Angeles, a scheduling snafu and spotty public interest muted the celebration launched so triumphantly at the Coliseum.

Perhaps the worst glitch came just before noon, when the relay entourage heading down Pico Boulevard turned north on Normandie Avenue--instead of jogging south toward St. Sophia Cathedral, where Greek dancers and 250 eager parishioners had been waiting for hours with holy water and olive branches to welcome the torch. Priests had planned to bless the procession from the steps of St. Sophia, which has the largest Greek Orthodox congregation in the United States, but they never caught a glimpse of the smoky orange flame.

“To say we are disillusioned and disappointed is an understatement,” said Constantine M. Boukidis, a Glendale lawyer and the president of the parish council.

Walking away from the church, one parishioner grumbled that he felt twice wronged: First, the 100th anniversary of the Olympic Games went to Atlanta, instead of Athens, and then the Greek community at St. Sophia missed out on a chance to witness the torch run.

The only consolation came from Zorba the Greek--as quoted by Father Paul Paris. “When something goes wrong,” Paris told the crowd, “we dance.”

So dance they did--torch or no torch.

“I’m disappointed, but I’ll get over it,” said John Stamatiades, 60. “This kind of event should foster man’s humanity to man, instead of bickering. As long as the Olympic ideal lives on, it’s OK.”

To spread that ideal, the torch relay will pass through 42 states over the next three months, mainly on foot but also by bicycle, canoe, sailboat, cable car, biplane, steamboat, train and tall ship.

Los Angeles officials crafted their route to cover as much of the city as possible, clearly relishing the chance for neighborhoods to strut their stuff before the relay headed through Glendale, Burbank, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Redondo Beach and Long Beach. The relay picks up today in Orange County.

“They’re going to run a picture of the torch coming down Sunset Boulevard in . . . all the papers,” predicted Tom La Bonge, the mayor’s director of field operations.

For all the local boosterism, the relay’s opening ceremony carefully emphasized the international spirit of the Olympics. World flags lined the first leg of the relay route, and 40 children dressed in ethnic costumes scrambled on stage to sing “The Power of the Dream,” which was written especially for the Olympics.

Festivities highlighting Los Angeles’ multiethnic flair picked up on the relay’s international theme. From Aztec art on Olvera Street to a dragon dance in Chinatown, from a bagpipe concert in Glendale to a block party in West Hollywood, dozens of cultural events were held throughout the day. Local organizers even scheduled a Queen Elizabeth look-alike contest on Rodeo Drive and set up an illuminated nine-story Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier.

In Glendale, about 20 of Liz Giltner’s family members and friends gathered to watch the high school junior from Canoga Park accept the flame from Bob Blanchard, a flight attendant from Newport Beach.

Giltner, a nationally ranked heptathalete, dreamed of being an Olympic contender one day. But by the time the torch approached, Giltner was in a panic.

“I’m really frantic right now,” she said, running her hands through her shoulder-length blond hair. “I think my hair is going to catch on fire when I start running.”

Finally, she decided to tie it up and prepared to accept the flame from Blanchard.

“Oh, this is exciting,” she said.

Kissing her father and squeezing his hand, she touched her torch to the eternal flame and was off.

“Go Liz!” came the call from the crowd.

Afterward, a sweaty and grinning Blanchard posed with onlookers for pictures.

“It is hard to describe the feeling out there,” he said.

The Giltner group planned to return to Canoga Park to relax but Blanchard had other plans.

“I didn’t want to have a drink before I started running,” he said. “But I can finally have one now. My buddies came out with me and they brought a keg of Coors Light. We’re going to party.”

For Juana Romo of Woodland Hills, the event in Glendale was her third Olympic torch stop of the day. She had been to the Coliseum at 9 a.m., Pershing Square downtown, to Chinatown and then back toward home in Glendale by 2 p.m.

“I just wanted my two boys to be here,” she said. “This is something they’ll never forget.”

The brilliant yellow and orange lights on the Ferris wheel lit up just as Keno DeVarney, a battalion chief for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, touched his flame to the gold-colored Olympic-style caldron that was waiting on the Santa Monica Pier.

Thousands of people had lined Wilshire Boulevard and Ocean Avenue, and several thousand more clustered on the pier during the evening to cheer on the torchbearer when he arrived. DeVarney said that he had been “high-fiving” spectators as he ran. “People were just so excited--it was contagious,” DeVarney said.

For the relay runners, all the attention got a bit nerve-racking. At a how-to briefing before the relay, Sylvia Dyson couldn’t help but dwell on an Olympic torch toter’s worst nightmare: tripping.

“Am I nervous? Yes,” said the Los Angeles native, who was nominated to carry the torch after being named a community hero for her work on the United Way campaign. “It’s just amazing to think that this is the flame; it’s here.”

Torchbearer No. 37, Lora Joy, harbored no anxieties about failing to finish her leg--after all, she’s considered the third best U.S. marathon walker in the 60-64 age group. But the bespectacled mother of three had an acute case of jelly nerves just the same. “I haven’t been able to sleep for the past three or four nights,” Joy said, as she awaited her moment in Saturday’s brilliant, brow-wetting sun. “My son said, ‘Mother, just think, you’ll be in the history books.’ I guess that’s true. I’m so excited.”

To practice for her own historic role--as the last person to carry the ’96 Olympic flame within Los Angeles city limits--75-year-old Dixie Henrikson dummied up a fake torch with a 3-pound barbell wrapped in red paper. Needing a little extra weight to mimic the torch exactly, Henrikson stuffed the paper with the best ballast she could come up with: a lemon and some rice.

“I’ve been marching around the neighborhood getting ready,” she said.

If tripping was a torchbearer’s worst nightmare, accidentally extinguishing the butane flame ranked a very close second. Trying to calm such jitters, organizers explained to the runners that each torch held enough butane to last 20 minutes, even though the relay legs would take a scant five minutes apiece. Runners don’t pass a single torch across the country; rather, they relay the flame.

“If the flame goes out,” volunteer Jennifer Dittman told them, “somebody will be all over you to light it again. Don’t take out your Bic or anything. We need to use the sacred flame.”

Times staff writers Jeff Brazil and Don Frederick and correspondents Mary Moore and Erin Texeira contributed to this story.