Rocky heads to Europe to deliver the Olympic message to Italians
S.L. mayor will pedal bike from Belgium to northern city of Torino
Anderson left Monday for a two-week trip to Europe, where he will join a Salt Lake contingent of bicyclists taking the city's Olympic message to city officials in Torino, host of the 2006 Winter Games.
While it might seem like a fun gig, the trek will be physically taxing as Anderson and five other Utah riders cross the continent from Belgium to northern Italy.
"He's a very stoic person," Anderson's spokeswoman Deeda Seed said of the mayor. "Whether he's in shape or not, he's going to make it."
The Salt Lake contingent, which also includes Deputy Mayor Rocky Fluhart, has been blogging their way through the trip, which began in Salt Lake City. They crossed the U.S., sailed across the Atlantic and will be in Leon, France, today when Anderson joins them.
The Web site www.slc2torino.com has been recording their messages as they have peddled through hundred-mile days. On July 12, for instance, the bike team traveled 112 miles.
"We hope the roads are straight, the wind behind our backs and the road signs understandable," the team wrote in a July 11 entry, the first day of the European journey.
Lillehammer, Norway, host of the 1994 Winter Games, started the Olympic message tradition by taking a message to Nagano, Japan, host of the 1998 Winter Games. Nagano officials, in turn, brought their Olympic message to Salt Lake City prior to 2002 and now it is Torino's turn.
By tradition, the message must be delivered using environmentally-friendly means of transportation that burn no fossil fuels.
The message is supposed to contain the previous Winter Games' host city's take on the environment, youth and peace.
Anderson penned Salt Lake's version, railing against fossil fuels and a lack of action by the international community to stop mass slaughters, and also calling for greater health care for the poor.
"Nations and international organizations, upon which we largely rely for peace and protection, failed to intervene to stop these atrocities," Anderson wrote.
The mayor will be back in his office Aug. 1. It cost $175,000 to bring the Olympic message to Torino. Only $25,000 of that comes from taxpayer dollars. The rest was donated by sponsors.
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com
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