Media Advisory: UB to hold torch rally Monday morning for World University Games

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo is no stranger to the World University Games.

UB hosted the games in July 1993, providing the venues for track and field, diving, tennis and volleyball, and housing the games’ 5,000 participants in the Ellicott Complex. And UB Stadium was built specially for the games, and remains one of its most recognizable legacies.

Now, the games are returning, in a fashion, to UB Stadium as the torch relay for the Lake Placid 2023 FISU World University Games comes to UB as part of a 15-stop tour that culminates in Lake Placid with the FISU Games’ first carbon-free cauldron lighting.

Members of the news media and public are invited to attend the event.

What: A torch relay for the Lake Placid 2023 FISU World University Games.

When: 10 a.m. Monday, Dec. 19.

Where: UB Stadium, North Campus.    

Torch-bearers: Victor E. Bull; Vickie Mitchell, head coach of the UB men’s and women’s track and field and cross-country teams, and an athlete from the 1993 games; and UB men’s basketball player Curtis Jones, a sophomore health and human services major.

Event speakers: Jon Lundin, head of communications and media for the games; President Satish K. Tripathi; Assemblymember Karen McMahon; and Mitchell.

About the Lake Placid 2023 FISU World University Games: The 2023 FISU Games, taking place from Jan. 12-22, are expected to bring together 1,500 collegiate athletes from 600 universities in 50 countries to participate in alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, curling, freestyle and freeski, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, short track speed skating, snowboarding ski jumping, and speed skating. 

For the first time, the FISU flame is being carried in a sustainable torch, with no actual combustion or flame present. Instead, in keeping with the Lake Placid 2023 FISU Games’ mission of sustainability as part of its Save Winter campaign, LED lights in the torch produce a brightly illuminated FISU flame in a carbon-free presentation.