NEW YORK, 14 October 2024 – The Torch Relay of the Torino 2025 FISU World University Winter Games paraded on behalf of the Region of Piedmont at the Columbus Day Parade on 5th Avenue in New York City, as part of the event organised by Italea – the programme to promote Tourism of Roots, launched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation within the PNRR project and financed by NextGenerationEU – on the occasion of ‘2024: Year of Italian Roots in the World’.
The Flame was carried by the President of the Organising Committee of the Torino 2025 Games, Alessandro Ciro Sciretti, who marched alongside the Consul General of Italy in New York, Fabrizio Di Michele, the Ambassador of Italy to the United States, Mariangela Zappia, Gary Rhodes (Professor and Department Head at California State University, expert in student services and President of the US Committee Pierre de Cubertin) and Fabrizio Ricca (President of the Games’ Honour Committee and representative of the Piedmont Region at the Parade).
Columbus Day is celebrated in New York every year on the second Monday in October, around the date Christopher Columbus first set foot in America. This year 2024 Columbus Day falls on Monday 14 October. A parade in honour of Christopher Columbus parades down Fifth Avenue and during the event, mainly Italian-American people connected to their roots gather. The presence at the 2024 Parade of the Organising Committee of the Torino 2025 FISU World University Games Winter confirms the importance that this event has in enhancing the value of Italy in the world, further underlining the unifying and transversal role played by the combination of Sport and Knowledge.
Designed under the banner of sustainability, the protocol of the World University Games Flame Relay is divided into three phases – international, national and Piedmontese – and includes stages on university campuses and places of cultural and tourist interest. The relay of the international phase started on 23 September in Brussels and travelled to Rabat in Morocco, where Turin and Rhine Ruhr celebrated the passing of the torch at the FISU Executive Committee on 26 and 27 September. On 9 October, it returned to Italy for the transition from FISU to FederCUSI at the Foro Italico in Rome, where the meeting between the university sports world, represented by Federcusi, and the Italian National Olympic Committee was held, in the presence of the highest Italian sports officials. After the 14 October stop in New York, the Torch will travel to Lausanne, for the final stage of the international phase of the tour, scheduled for 22 October at the FISU University and Headquarters.
The tour will return to Italy with stops in Trento on 29 October, in Milan on 4 November, and on 8 and 9 November in Caivano and Salerno (organiser of the European University Games 2026). It will then, again in November, reach the main venues of the universities in Piedmont and, in December, arrive in the municipalities hosting the Games.
Finally, the Torch will return to Turin on 13 January 2025 on the occasion of the Inauguration Ceremony that will kick off the XXXII FISU World University Games Winter.
