New Vancouver Olympics Logo Unveiled

The Vancouver Olympics have a new logo, inspired by the peoples of Canadaâ??s Arctic Circle.

â??Itâ??s a strong, very strong symbol for Canada,â? IOC Coordination Commission chairman Rene Fasel tells Around the Rings from Vancouver.

The design is modeled after an inukshuk, which are stone monuments created by the Inuits of the Arctic Circle.

Used for thousands of years as a landmark and navigation tool, the inukshuk in the Vancouver logo appears to be a human form with outstretched arms, so it is also considered symbolic of northern hospitality and friendship.

Elena Rivera MacGregor and designer Gonzalo Alatorre

of Rivera Design Group in Vancouver created the logo, which they call Ilanaaq, the Inuit word for friend.

Colors include coast forest green, glacier blue, ocean blue, maple leaf red and alpen glow yellow.

â??The inukshuk was one character that could pretty much

tell the whole story,� MacGregor told Around The

Rings. â??The value of the style and the components of

the color put it over the top.

The winning design was chosen last October by an international panel of design experts, one of more than 1,600 entries in a competition open only to Canadians.

Although there are no Inuit tribes in the province of

British Columbia, an inukshuk appears to be a fitting

symbol for at least one reason: Arctic Canada is where

the Olympic torch relay's Canadian leg will start,

sometime in 2009.

"Imagine the torch relay arriving in Canada above the

Arctic Circle, further north than it has ever been,"

VANOC president John Furlong told the IOC on July 3,

2003 in Prague. "And then traveling over 15,000

kilometres (9,300 miles) from sea to sea to sea,

unifying our vast country."

Reported by Bob Mackin in Vancouver

All the Olympic News of the Week in the April 23 issue of Around the Rings, now online, for subscribers only.