Canadian Olympic gold medalists Le May Doan and Whitfield are first 2010 torchbearers

Vancouver Winter Games torch relay begins

VICTORIA, British Columbia — Triathlon gold medalist Simon Whitfield and speedskating champion Catriona Le May Doan joined to light a torch for the Vancouver Games on Friday, kicking off the longest domestic torch relay in Olympic history.

Whitfield, who won gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and silver at the 2008 Beijing Games, resides in Victoria, where the relay started. Le May Doan is the only Canadian to successfully defend an individual Olympic title, having won gold at Nagano and Salt Lake City.

Over 106 days, the torch will stop in every Canadian province and territory leading to the lighting of the cauldron at BC Place. The games will be held from Feb. 12-28 in Vancouver and Whistler.

The torch relay will cover nearly 28,000 miles, reaching the most extreme corners of the country, to Alert in Canada’s arctic and L’Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland, on Canada’s Atlantic coast. It will pass through more than 1,000 communities and be carried by 12,000 torchbearers on a journey by plane, boat, bike, dogsled, skateboard and other modes of transportation.

Protesters greeted the flame’s arrival by staging what they called a “five-ring circus” with a parade, a makeshift torch of their own and a “Zombie March” complete with costumes, drums and trombones.

About 250 people crowded a downtown square to hear a series of speeches and watch as two bicycles circled around while an announcer listed financial figures associated with the Games.

There was no sign of disturbance and police officers dressed in yellow vests walked within the throng.

Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson carried the flame, burning in a miner’s lantern, out of the aircraft that arrived Friday from Greece, where the flame was lit by the rays of the sun on the site of the ancient games.

The flame was handed off to aboriginal native Canadians, who brought it across Victoria’s inner harbor in their traditional canoes. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell made short speeches.

“All of this country is set to bask in the Olympic glow as the flame visits communities from coast to coast to coast,” Harper said. “Not only is the run we are kicking off today going to be the longest torch relay within a single country in Olympic history, when it arrives in Alert, Nunavut, the northern most tip of our Canadian territory, the Olympic flame will have officially traveled farther north than it has ever been before.”

The crowd that greeted the Olympic flame observed a moment of silence for the late Jack Poole, who played a large role in bringing the Olympics to Vancouver. Poole died last week following a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer.

Poole spearheaded the city’s bid for the Olympics, working for a decade to bring the games to British Columbia. He was also chairman of the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee’s board of directors.

His death came a one day after the flame for the Vancouver Games was lit in Greece.