Police participate in annual Torch Run set for Tuesday

Staff Report

HARDIN COUNTY — Police officers from throughout Hardin County will be running for a cause Tuesday as part of the annual Torch Run benefit for Special Olympics.

The event begins just after dawn at West Hardin Middle School where state troopers and sheriff’s deputies run laps equivalent to the distance from the school to the Hardin/Meade county line, before sending the torch to U.S. 62 where Elizabethtown police runners will pick up the Olympic torch and carry it through to the Elizabethtown/Radcliff border.

Troopers and deputies previously ran on the roadside, but traffic concerns reduced their leg to the confines of the middle school track.

From W.A. Jenkins Road, where Elizabethtown police relay the torch to Radcliff police, it is carried north on U.S. 31W to Fort Knox where runners will keep the torch going across the state.

The running of the Special Olympic torch through Hardin County is part of a run across Kentucky leading up to the Special Olympics on June 6.

Darrell Brangers, communications supervisor for EPD and coordinator for the Hardin County Torch Run, said local law enforcement typically schedule the run a week before the Special Olympics, but decided this year to go ahead with the regular, late May scheduling for the run.

Money is raised for the Special Olympics via the run by way of sponsors and individual donors who may contact their respective police departments to contribute.

The Torch Run in Hardin County has been done for more than 16 years.