Dinah Gould does not really need a stick to walk, but when she becomes the oldest of the 8,000 torchbearers to carry the Olympic flame around the country this summer, she’ll keep one handy, just in case.
Mrs Gould, who is 99 but will be 100 by the time the torch relay begins, was offered a wheelchair for her 300-metre section of the journey in Barnet, North London, but said she would prefer to travel under her own steam: “I’m not going to run. At 100, I think I’m entitled to walk.”
She is no longer a sportswoman, having given up badminton when she turned 86, but the armchair-based exercise class she runs at her retirement home in Harrow includes a few yoga moves.
She spoke yesterday as she sat beside Dominic MacGowan, 11, a footballing and rock-climbing schoolboy from Dudley, West Midlands, who will be the youngest torchbearer. They modelled the white and gold tracksuits all flame carriers will wear and were given their first touch of the perforated metal torches at the official launch of the flame’s route at Redlands Primary School, Stepney Green, East London.
The relay will begin at Land’s End at the tip of Cornwall on May 19, when the flame will be given to Tassy Swallow, 18, who hopes one day to represent Britain in surfing. The flame will zig-zag across the West Country over the following days before heading north for a loop around Wales. Its route will come within ten miles of 95 per cent of the population, including in Northern Ireland, Orkney, Shetland, Lewis, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Among the torchbearers who were named by the London Games organisers yesterday was Steven Tomlinson, 14, whose mother Jane raised £1.85 million after breast cancer was diagnosed in 2000. She died in 2007. Steven, who watched his mother carry the torch before the Athens Games in 2004, will be one of two runners in Leeds.
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The route launch was attended by Boris Johnson, the London Mayor.He asked pupils why the flame comes from Mount Olympus. “Because that was where . . . actually, I can’t remember,” Mr Johnson said. He then asked who stole the secret of fire from the gods. A photographer suggested Fireman Sam before a pupil called out: “Prometheus.”
An average of 115 torchbearers a day will take part in the relay culminating in the opening ceremony in Stratford, East London on July 27.