The cauldron that will hold the Olympic flame is to be installed this weekend on top of a 150-foot steel trellis at the south end of the University of Utah Rice-Eccles stadium where it will be visible to passers-by, although the actual flame won’t reach the stadium until the day of the Opening Ceremony on Feb. 8.
Jim Doyle, an engineer with WET Design and the cauldron’s lead designer said, “we were going to keep it enshrouded. But that became too impractical given its location. It made more sense to announce the design and show it off”.
On Tuesday the Salt Lake Organizing Committee will conduct a media tour of the device.
SLOC spokeswoman Nancy Volmer said that although it’s not unprecedented to unveil the cauldron before the Games, organizers in Sydney did everything they could to keep it under wraps for the 2000 Summer Games. The cauldron was submerged in water until the arrival of the torch during the Opening Ceremony.
Doyle hinted at the cauldron’s artistic and mechanical elements, a blend of the traditional and modern. “There’s not a right angle in the whole thing. There are thousands of pieces and they’re all different sizes. We’re out there on the edge of engineering”, he said, adding much of the material had to be shipped in from England and Japan. “We’ve tried to build a structure that is aesthetically pleasing on its own. But its intent is to support the Olympic flame”.
Water is one of the cauldron’s design elements, though “you’ll have to look close to see it”, said Doyle. In addition to an aesthetic purpose the water helps cool the eight million BTU burner, which will be staffed by a team of operators 24 hours a day throughout the 17 days of the Games.
“We don’t want the flame going out”, he said.
