Olympic flame for Milan Cortina Winter Games handed to Italian organizers in Athens

The Olympic flame for the Milan Cortina Winter Games was formally handed to Italian organizers on Thursday in the all-marble stadium in central Athens where the first modern Olympics were held nearly 130 years ago.

From Athens the flame will travel to Italy, where it will begin a 63-day, 12,000-kilometer relay through all 110 Italian provinces before reaching Milan's San Siro Stadium for the opening ceremony on Feb. 6.

Italy will host the flame for the first time in 20 years and 10,000 torchbearers have been organized.

"To stand here in this historic stadium provides an inspiring reminder of the honor we have been granted and the precious treasure we will carry home with us," Milan Cortina organizing committee president Giovanni Malago said before receiving the flame.

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A forecast of severe rainstorms in Athens kept large crowds away and led organizers to announce the ceremony would be shortened. But the rain held off until the very end, a weak sun filtering through the heavy black clouds, and the few hardy spectators who turned up were able to enjoy a performance featuring Greek and Italian singers and a children's choir in the stadium which staged the first modern Games in 1896.

After spending the night burning in a cauldron outside the 5th century B.C. Parthenon temple atop the Acropolis, Greece's most famous landmark, the flame was carried into the Panathenaic stadium by Greek water polo player Elena Xenaki, who lit another cauldron in the stadium along with Greece's women's national water polo team.

The flame was lit on Nov. 26 in Ancient Olympia, the site of the ancient games which inspired the modern Olympic