OLYMPICS. For the first time in history, the Olympic flame was brought to the North Pole on board the nuclear-powered icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy (50 Years of Victory). An ITAR-TASS correspondent, who is participating in this unique expedition, reports that the icebreaker left Murmansk and has passed more than 2,500 kilometers across the Arctic Ocean, reached the North Pole today.

Photo: RIA Novosti

As the press-service of the Sochi-2014 organizing committee has informed an ITAR-TASS correspondent, during the voyage the Olympic flame was in a special icon-lamp in one of the cabins of the icebreaker.

"The fire in the icon-lamp was lit from the fire from Olympia, and it reached the North Pole", - a representative of the organizing committee of the Games said. The icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy left Murmansk for the North Pole with the Olympic flame onboard on October 15. The solemn departure ceremony was attended by Governor of the Murmansk region Marina Kovtun; General Director of the Atomflot unitary enterprise Vyacheslav Ruksha; head of the expedition, famous Russian polar explorer, special presidential representative for international cooperation in the Arctic and Antarctic Arthur Chilingarov represented the participants of the expedition.

The icebreaker reached the North Pole in less than four days. A relay and Olympic bowl lighting ceremony was organized in the northern most point of the planet. The Olympic flame relay Sochi-2014 is the longest and the most ambitious in the history of the Winter Olympic Games. It will be held in all 83 regions of the country. Fourteen thousand torchbearers and 30 thousand accompanying volunteers will carry it through thousands of settlements. The relay started on October 7, 2013 and will end on February 7, when the Olympic Games in Sochi will begin.

The flame will be transported across Russia in the hands of pedestrian torchbearers, by airplanes and trains, on snowmobiles, reindeer and dog sleds, and on Russian troika. The relay includes four special stages, the first of which was the visit to the North Pole. Then the Olympic flame will be plunged into the bottom of Lake Baikal and raised to the top of Elbrus – reaching a height of 5,300 meters above sea level, and also sent into outer space.

Radio Voice of Russia, ITAR-TASS
25 October 2013, 10:52
Photos: RIA Novosti