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US Olympic torch relay rerouted
10/04/2008 07:27 - (SA)
San Francisco - The Olympic torch played hide and seek with thousands of demonstrators and spectators crowding the San Francisco waterfront on Wednesday before being spirited away without even a formal goodbye on its symbolic stop in the United States.
After its parade was rerouted and shortened to prevent disruptions by massive crowds of anti-China protesters, the planned closing ceremony at the waterfront was cancelled and moved to San Francisco International Airport. The flame was put directly on a plane and was not displayed.
The last-minute changes to the route and the site of the closing ceremony were made amid security concerns following chaotic protests in London and Paris of China's human rights record in Tibet and elsewhere, but they effectively prevented many spectators who wanted to see the flame from witnessing the historic moment.
Crowds left confused
As it made its way through the streets of San Francisco, the flame travelled in switchbacks and left the crowds confused and waiting for a parade that never arrived. Protesters also hurriedly changed plans and chased the rerouted flame.
Mayor Gavin Newsom told The Associated Press that the well-choreographed switch of the site of the closing ceremony was prompted by the size and behaviour of the crowds massing outside AT&T Park, where the opening ceremony took place.
There was "a disproportionate concentration of people in and around the start of the relay", he said in a phone interview while travelling in a caravan that accompanied the torch.
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge expressed relief that the San Francisco relay avoided the turmoil at previous events.
"Fortunately, the situation was better ... in San Francisco," Rogge said at an Olympic meeting in Beijing. "It was, however, not the joyous party that we had wished it to be."
Less than an hour before the relay began, officials cut the original six-mile route nearly in half.
'Tibetan separatists' thwarted
Chinese state media declared the event a success, praising the last-minute route changes as a clever strategy for thwarting "Tibetan separatists".
The activists "ran into a brick wall in San Francisco", the Global Times newspaper, published by the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily, said on its website. It called the changes a "brilliant idea".
"Today's relay was full of suspense and drama ... the whole story was like a Hollywood movie," China News Service said, though it also called the San Francisco leg a "harmonious journey".
- AP
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