With about 150 days left to the first Winter Olympics to be held here, torchbearers for the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 are to be announced this month by the organizing committee, for which  Coca-Cola, the worldwide Olympic partner, helped gather.

As a presenting partner of the Olympic Torch Relay, Coca-Cola has been offering a unique experience to non-athlete participants of the event through the torch relay.

“We will try to deliver a one of a kind experience and memory for customers as the worldwide Olympic partner through various marketing campaigns besides the torch relay,” Coca-Cola said in a statement.

The Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 is the first Olympic Games held in Korea since the Olympic Summer Games Seoul 1988. It is also the country’s first Winter Olympics.

Ahead of the upcoming Winter Olympics, which marks Coca-Cola’s 90th anniversary as the sponsor of the global event, the company held a promotion recruiting torchbearers between March and May this year.

When the finalists are announced by the organizing committee, they will be participating in the relay along with Coca-Cola starting November, the company said.

Through Coca-Cola, about 24,000 torchbearers have participated in the Olympics over the 25 years between the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the company said.

The company’s sports marketing dates back to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, when it handed out 1,000 boxes of the soft drink to US athletes free of charge. 

By Kim Bo-gyung (lisakim425@heraldcorp.com)