Torch used at 1968 Olympic closing ceremony up for auction

NEW YORK: A torch used by French wrestler Daniel Robin to light the Olympic cauldron for the 1968 Grenoble Winter Games closing ceremony is among the Olympic items on auction starting Thursday.

Boston-based RR Auction will hold an auction of the items January 10-17, including an ice hockey gold medal from Grenoble, a 2016 Rio Olympic gold medal and a 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Winter Olympics bronze medal.

Robin, a 1967 world welterweight wrestling champion, took Olympic silver in freestyle and Greco-Roman disciplines at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. He died last May at age 74.

The torch, among only 33 made for the Grenoble Olympics, was used by Robin at Le Stade de Glace on February 18, 1968, and features plaques with the Games emblem on the sides of the burner head.

Robin, who owned the torch for the past half-century until his passing, lit the last Grenoble Olympic flame seen before it was extinguished.Eight months later, Robin would become the first wrestler to capture two silver medals at the same Olympics. He was inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2012.