Hamilton student among first Pan Am torchbearers named

Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School student Denzel Innis will have a lot of catching up to do with his friends once school resumes after March break.

The Grade 12 student was revealed, on Monday at a special event in Toronto, as one of the 3,000 torchbearers for the upcoming Pan Am Games, a secret he kept guarded until this week. 

"I wasn't allowed to tell anybody until today," he said in an interview with CBC Hamilton on Monday. "It was hard, but it was for a good reason." 

Innis and nine other people — including triathlete Simon Whitfield — were named as the first torchbearers at Monday's event. The torch and the torchbearer's uniform were also unveiled. 

The orange-and-white torch bears the iconography of the Pan Am events. It will be lit from the Games flame currently burning in Mexico, then travel for more than 5,000 kilometres and cover 130 communities in Canada. 

Some 3,000 torchbearers — ranging from 13 to 95 in age — will carry the torch during the 41-day relay. 

"I think it's a good representation of the games," Innis said of the torch. "It really speaks to what the games are about and people's different skills."

Although he is still waiting for the details of the relay, Innis said he will be running a 200-metre leg in Dundas some time in June. 

"Thrilled is the only word I can really use to describe it," he said. 

The Scarborough-born, Hamilton-raised teenager was one of the winners of a CIBC youth scholarship, which came with the opportunity to carry the flame. 

An avid football player, Innis is also a music lover and a trumpet player. He has applied to study music for university. 

But as his face started popping up on TV along with the news of the torch unveiling, he will have more than football and music to talk about with his classmates when they return from March break. 

"My phone has been blowing up. Everyone knows already," he said.