War veteran, 100-year-old among Olympic torchbearers

LONDON — A soldier wounded in Afghanistan and a 100-year-old woman are among 7,300 people who will carry the Olympic torch through Britain ahead of the London 2012 Games, organisers said Monday.

London 2012 Olympic torchbearers (L-R) Abul Kasam aged 30, Dinah Gould aged 99, Dominic John MacGowan aged 11, Rosy Ryan aged 17 and Aidan Kirkwood aged 23 pose for photographers during a photocall at Redlands Primary School in east London on March 19, 2012. The names of the sports fans and charity fundraisers chosen to carry the flame were unveiled alongside a street-by-street map of the 8,000 miles (almost 13,000 kilometres) the torch will travel around Britain. AFP PHOTO / BEN STANSALL

The names of the sports fans and charity fundraisers chosen to carry the flame were unveiled alongside a street-by-street map of the 8,000 miles (almost 13,000 kilometres) the torch will travel around Britain.

The flame will be lit in Greece on May 10, arriving in Britain just over a week later and reaching the Olympic Stadium in London for the opening ceremony of the Games on July 27.

Among the torchbearers is Jack Otter, a 23-year-old from London who lost both his legs and his left arm during a bomb blast while he was serving in Afghanistan with the British army in September 2009.

Confined to a wheelchair, he continues to struggle with his health, enduring several operations and suffering pneumonia and infections, but recently completed a tandem sky-dive to raise money for charity.

Britain’s oldest full-time firefighter, 63-year-old Malcolm Styles, has also been chosen to carry the torch after raising tens of thousands of pounds for cancer research after the disease killed his wife.

Other torchbearers include Dinah Gould, who will be 100 at the time of the Games but remains fits and even gives exercise classes in the retirement flats where she lives in London, and 12-year-old Keia Wardman, a regional swimming champion and keen surfer from Cornwall in southwest England.

An average of 115 torchbearers a day will carry the flame during its journey through more than 1,000, villages, towns and cities in Britain, using a variety of different methods of transport, from hot air balloon to motorbike.