Marlborough, Pewsey and Burbage torchbearers ready for big chance to join Olympic trail (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Marlborough, Pewsey and Burbage torchbearers ready for big chance to join Olympic trail

4:00pm Thursday 5th July 2012 in News

The Olympic flame returns to Wiltshire next week and three people from the Marlborough area are waiting in the wings to carry it.

William Copp, 17, a sixth-form student at St John’s School, Marlborough, who plays wheelchair basketball for his school and for Wiltshire, will be taking a turn with the torch in Salisbury where his grandparents live and where his father Jon, the director of Marlborough College Summer School, was brought up.

William, who has cerebral palsy, will be the first to carry the torch on Thursday, setting off from Cranebridge Road at 7.57am.

Also carrying the flame in Salisbury, but on the previous day, will be 12-year-old Gemma Bawcutt from Hilcott who goes to Pewsey Vale School and who will be one of the youngest people to have the privilege of carrying the torch.

Gemma was nominated by her PE teacher Lyndsey Shaw because of her commitment to sport at PVS. Watching will be her parents Duncan and Elizabeth, sisters Olivia, 14, and Philippa, 16, and grandfather Alan Latham.

The third torch carrier from the area will be dad-of-two Will Stevenson from Burbage who will carry the torch in Andover on Wednesday as it makes its way to Salisbury where it will stay overnight.

Mr Stevenson, 39, is hoping organisers will allow him to carry his five-year-old daughter Lily on his shoulders to raise awareness of a condition called Smith Magenis Syndrome which she was born with.