Steve Capus: Olympic Torch Bearer…

The Vancouver Sun’s Shelley Fralic writes about NBC News President Steve Capus carrying a torch in the relay to the Olympics…

It was Dick Ebersol, who’s in charge of sports and Olympics for NBC, who asked Capus last November if he wanted a spot in the relay. He hesitated for not one second.

“It was so cool,” said Capus. “Jumping off that [torchbearer] bus into those crowds. They made me feel like a rock star.”

So did his staff back at the International Broadcast Centre in downtown Vancouver, who started taking photos of the boss when he showed up after the relay still wearing his torchbearer uniform and carrying the soot-covered torch.

Capus’s 300-metre relay leg was all downhill, on New Westminster’s cobblestoned Fourth Street as it heads toward Columbia, and the Fraser River, and Capus says he was overwhelmed by the energy and enthusiasm of the crowds who lined the road, by the diversity of the faces of the young and old, and by their unabashed patriotism.

“It’s a wonderfully unifying thing. All these generations, and these beautiful children. I felt like I’d been dropped into a storybook.”

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