SINGAPORE: The four Singaporeans taking part in the Olympic Torch relay this Saturday in Nanjing will now have to wait a little longer.

On Thursday, the Beijing Olympic Games Organising Committee announced that some legs of the relay will be rescheduled after the relay was disrupted for three days - from May 19 to May 21 - to mourn the recent Sichuan earthquake victims.

The official Beijing Olympic website confirmed the torch relay was restarted on May 22 in Ningbo, where it was halted.

A moment of silence was observed to mourn those who perished before the restart. Many planned performances were cancelled and replaced with donation points and disaster relief promotion signs.

Organisers now want to use the Torch relay to contribute to the national relief efforts for the earthquake-hit areas, and highlight the concept of the "People's Olympics".

In line with that, the Sichuan leg of the relay will now be shifted to August 3-5 from the originally scheduled dates of June 15-18.

The change means that this will be the last relay leg before Beijing, which will see the Olympic flame entering the main stadium to start the Olympic Games on August 8.

The schedule of relay legs in other provinces and municipalities will be rearranged as well, according to the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay Centre.

The relay involving the four Singaporean runners will now be on May 27.

The Singaporean runners are engineer Kamal Akhtar, three times winner of the Samsung Torch Bearer contest, telco chiefs Terry Clontz from StarHub and Neil Montefiore from M1, and Channel NewsAsia's Sports Reporter Patwant Singh.

All of them are already in Shanghai. - CNA/de