Behind the scenes with the torch - Part 4
"We're going to make history
today," a city official told us, gathered in the Grand Ballroom of the
Hilton.
"There have been adjustments to
the route and the order you were in yesterday is no longer relevant."
Instead, she told us, we would be
running in pairs -- two hands on the torch at one time. The route will thus be
three miles instead of six.
I am paired up with Jasmine Nachtigall,
a senior at Hillsdale High School and incoming Stanford freshman. We are
to start along the Embarcadero, at Pier 19.
Mayor Newsom stood on a chair at the front of
the room and said the route, now three miles instead of six, would be safe, a
"stark contrast" to London and Paris.
The route follows the waterfront
Embarcadero only -- with the road lined on both sides by roadside barriers.
Those barriers ought to make for a big
difference from the scenes in Britain and France, the mayor said.
An additional 66 officers have been put
on roadside duty, the mayor said, promising an "enormous amount of
security."
If there's an incident, he said,
"Be calm. Don't worry. We'll have so many people right around you."
He also said officials believe there
will be "many times more people out there celebrating than people opposed
-- you will be quite welcomed."
Now we're on a bus -- we being the final 20
pairs.
I'm in the second row, sitting next to
Anita De Frantz. Jasmine is immediately behind; a big cardboard box of torches
is immediately ahead of us.
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Mayor Newsom, his voice hoarse, got on our bus nearly 75 minutes after we
got on it.
Protesters and activists have infiltrated the Embarcadero near downtown.
The route has to move, he said.
Now it will move down Van Ness, one of the main north-south street in town,
then west into the Marina and the Park Presidio -- more like the original
course.
Police were already being pulled from some of their assigned stations, not too
fast and not too many at a time -- to sustain the impression we were still
going to be on the Embarcadero.
"You up for it?" he asked.
"Let's do it!" came a voice from the back of the bus.
The mayor paused, then said, "God bless you."
At 1:46 pm, the bus started moving west on Ellis, toward Van Ness. "Yea!'" came shouts. Outside, spectators waved shouts of encouragement.
At Van Ness and Post the bus was greeted by applause.
"I wouldn't say we're winging it," said someone on the bus as the first torchbearer pair was dropped off about 1:56 on Van Ness south of California Street.
North of California, Olympic swim medalist Mark Henderson and Michael Bailey, a Special Olympic swimmer, were dropped off. The crowd embraced them, took photos -- big smiles all around.
By 10 after 2, torchbearer pair 5 was out on Van Ness. Jasmine and I are pair 21.
"Not to worry," I tell her. "By 21 everyone will have figured this out."
A radio reporter on KGO 740 AM has already figured it out -- two buses coming down Van Ness, she says.
The anchorman says, apparently the protesters don't have radios?
On the bus, that earns a big laugh.
"I never expected to see it. I never planned on seeing it," the reporter says -- the torch going right by her.
At 2:30 pm, pair 17 gets off, still on Van Ness but by now nearly at San Francisco Bay.
Pair 18 gets off between Francisco and Van Ness.
I re-tie my shoelaces and put them in a double knot.
We turn west onto Bay Street.
At Gough, the Golden Gate bridge looming in the background. Jasmine and I get off.
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About this blog
NBC Sports contributor Alan Abrahamson brings a wealth of knowledge to his coverage of the Olympics and the sports world.
Thank you.
Thank you for blogging - because of your comments, the general public gets a clear picture of how everything transpired. It's enlightening! Right now there is so much controversy brewing in the Bay Area; people are questioning the Mayor's decision to change the route, other city leaders going to the media to publicly criticize the Mayor and people are forgetting that the real culprits in this matter are the protesters who made a choice not to protest peacefully -they are the true villians in this situation. As I tell my little ones that making bad choices leads to negative consequences - it's a shame that there are so many grownups that forget that fact.
Thank you. Hope you enjoy the games in Beijing!
Heard that someone accused him, but I do think that the San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, and his government did a great job in providing a fair environment or platform for all the sides to function or "play" in today's event. In comparison, the Paris city government should have done better --- it seemed not functioning as a government.
Thanks, Alan Abrahamson, for your articles --- I read them all, and enjoyed every bit of reading them.
Also, I appreciate what Peter Ueberroth, the chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said, which was quoted in this article.
I feel really angry about the violent protestors following the torch and trying to ruin Olympics. These people are NEVER peaceful! They were trying to kill and burn non-Tibetans in Tibet, and now they go all over the world to convince people that they deserve sympathy? I heard many of them actually got paid to protest, maybe that's the only reason why you might feel sorry for them.
It really is not right to use Olympics as a dirty political tool. I don't see how anyone should boycott Olympics to punish the whole world in order to help a small violent terrorist-like group.