The 18-year-old Winter Games hopeful will carry the Torch once it has been lit by the sun, using a parabolic mirror, at a special ceremony in Ancient Olympian on September 29 as it begins its 65,000-kilometre journey to the Opening Ceremony on February 7 next year.

Antoniou has been a member of the Greek national ski team since 2011 and competed at the International Ski Federation (FIS) World Junior Alpine Skiing Championships in 2012 before representing his country at the 2013 FIS World Alpine Skiing Championships in Schladming, Austria.

"The Olympic Torch Relay is one of the most important and magical Olympic occasions," said Sochi 2014 President and chief executive Dmitry Chernyshenko.

"It continues the build up of excitement ahead of the Games and, as well as spreading the Olympic values to the whole country.

"We will be creating, as a nation, an important part of Russian history."

The Sochi 2014 Torch will travel approximately 65,000km around Russia, making it the longest Relay in Olympic Winter Games history


The Sochi 2014 Olympic Torch Relay, which will begin in Sochi on October 7, will be the longest in the history of the Winter Games, taking in 2,900 towns across Russia's 83 regions as it travels by car, train, plane, Russian troika and reindeer sleigh.

More than 14,000 Torchbearers and 30,000 volunteers will carry the Torch, and Sochi 2014 expects that 90 per cent of the Russian population will be within an hour's reach of the Relay, meaning that 130 million Russians will be able to experience it for themselves.

Earlier this year, Sochi 2014 also confirmed that the Torch will be the first in history to travel in space.

The spacewalk leg of the Relay will see the Torch launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakhstan on November 7 aboard the Soyuz TMA-11M manned Soviet-designed spaceship and travel approximately 400km to the International Space Station (ISS).

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