Torch Plans Hit a Snag

By Helene Elliott

Dec. 12, 2003 12 AM PT

A promotion to select carriers of the Olympic flame through Los Angeles on its way to the Athens Games has a significant catch: Forms to nominate candidates are available only at Albertsons stores, which are being picketed by locked-out supermarket workers.

The contest will choose 30 winners, based on their inspirational qualities as detailed in essays due by Dec. 31. Allison Resner of Fast Horse Inc., the firm promoting the contest, said there was no alternative to entering besides crossing a picket line.

“We wish that wasn’t the case,” she said.

The torch relay will be in Los Angeles on June 16, one of four U.S. stops.

-- Helene Elliott

Olympics

Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

Torch Plans Hit a Snag

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