Friday, April 11, 2008

Torch flickers in Buenos Aires: Red Flags and Water Balloons

The cadre sleeps easier tonight, presuming the worst is over, those wacky Euros and their American cousins. Unexpected is the game. Cadre listens for a twig breaking in the forest. Torch comes.

Olympic Torch Proceeds
In Argentina's Capital
Associated Press
April 11, 2008 6:05 p.m.

BUENOS AIRES -- Argentine runners carried the Olympic torch past fenced-off protesters Friday, as hundreds of China supporters in red windbreakers tried to reverse weeks of bad publicity for the host of the Summer Games.

Activists opposing China's human-rights record unfurled banners and promised "entertaining surprises" but pledged to keep their demonstrations peaceful after protests disrupted stops in London, Paris and San Francisco. At least three water balloons were thrown at the flame at it passed the presidential palace, but guards batted them away.


Hundreds of spectators cheered as Chinese delegates wearing Argentina's blue-and-white lit the torch from a lantern that has carried the flame from the site of the ancient Olympic games in Greece.

Mayor Mauricio Macri held the slender aluminum torch aloft, then passed it to three-time Olympic windsurfing medalist Carlos Espinola, who jogged into Buenos Aires streets flanked by Chinese bodyguards. Heavyset police from Argentina's navy huffed to keep up.

Rowers sped the flame down a muddy River Plate canal, their long oars flashing beneath gathering storm clouds, before runners on land jogged it past the pink presidential palace. Winds caused the propane-powered torch to flicker, but it didn't go out.

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