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Kaluga region to welcome Olympic Torch Relay on Sunday

The 18-kilometer distance will be broken into 90 laps
Photo EPA/GERRY PENNY
Photo EPA/GERRY PENNY

KALUGA, October 13 (Itar-Tass) - The Kaluga region in central European Russia will host the Olympic Torch Relay on Sunday, after the Smolensk region.

The first to welcome the Olympic flame will be a small town of Yukhnov with a population of 6,600 at 13:00 Moscow time. Ten torchbearers will cover a distance of two kilometers. It is expected that about 4,000 people will come to see the relay.

At 16:30 Moscow time, the Olympic Torch will arrive at the city of Kaluga. The Kaluga relay leg will start from the Anenki sports facility. The 18-kilometer distance will be broken into 90 laps, at one of which the torchbearer will ride a horse accompanied by other horsemen. At another lap, the torchbearer will cross a dam lake in aboat.

Torchbearers will include Kaluga’s most prominent residents, including director of local drama theatre Alexander Krivovichev, Olympic champion in swimming Sergei Skvortsov, as well as schoolchildren, doctors and teachers.

Russian popular singer Nikolai Baskov was also nominated as a potential torchbearer in the Kaluga region but his nomination caused controversy in social networks and Baskov withdrew his candidature.

The torchbearer at the final lap of the relay will be Sergei Smburov, a grand grandson of the father founder of the present-day cosmonautics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He will light the Olympic flame at the Olympic cauldron in the square in front of the museum of cosmonautics.

To commemorate this event, the Kaluga regional department of the federal postal service issued 500 copies of a postal card featuring the Olympic Torch Relay emblem and the Tsiolkovsky state museum of the history of cosmonautics.

On October 14, the Olympic Torch will be passed on to the Tula region, and on October 15 - to the Ryazan region.