Olympic flag to be carried aboard racing classic
Powerboat champion, Shelley Jory, will be helping the City of Southampton to celebrate its close links with the Olympics. When the games were staged in London in 1908 Southampton hosted the “motor boating” events which were then an Olympic sport.
On Sunday 24 August Shelley will start the ceremony in which Southampton raises a special 2012 flag. The City is one of a number across the country marking the official handover from Beijing to London at the close of the current Games.
The flag will arrive at the Civic Centre via a number of carriers across the City, which is twinned with Qingdao, this year’s Olympic sailing venue. Shelley will start the journey by powerboat before taking the helm of GEE, a recently restored 40ft (12.1m) classic cabin racer accompanied by Fiona Pankhurst from the Hampshire-based marine electronics company Raymarine and organiser of the Earls Court ‘Sail Power and Watersports Show’, James Brooke.
The flag’s journey will continue on the water after being passed to a group of rowing skiffs, each representing one of the local clubs on the River Itchen. The flag will then be rowed to SWAC where it will be handed over to cyclists. They will then take the flag to the Quays diving complex where it will be finally exchanged before being run to the Civic Centre.
