“It’s going to be spectacular and will showcase all our territories,” Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet said at a ceremony at the French capital’s Sorbonne university. The flame will then travel through Strasbourg, Reims and Lille among others before a relay in Paris on July 14-15 — which will go through the Pantheon and the National Assembly and Senate (the lower and upper houses of parliament) — with some 400 towns being visited in total. The relays, which will feature around 10,000 torch bearers, will be captained by Olympic swimming gold medallists Laure and Florent Manaudou and para-athlete Dimitri Pavade.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said the flame would visit popular neighbourhoods and that a ‘vigil’ would be organised at the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) on July 14. In a traditional ceremony at the site of the ancient Games, an actress playing a high priestess lights the torch for every Games — summer or winter — using a parabolic mirror before passing the flame to the first torchbearer at the edge of the ancient Olympic stadium in Olympia. Following a brief domestic relay in Greece the flame is then handed over to the host city.
Paris organisers have said they will use a three-masted ship the ‘Belem’ to take it the port city of Marseille, where the sailing competitions of the Olympics will take place. Usually the flame, held in a safety lantern, is flown by plane to the Olympic Games host city. Marseille, founded by the Greek settlers of Phocaea around 600 BC, is the starting point of the French leg of the relay.
Paris 2024 organisers have been planning to install the Olympic flame on the Eiffel Tower, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters last month. Friday’s ceremony provided organisers with a moment of respite after their headquarters were raided by police as part of a preliminary investigation into alleged corruption on Tuesday.
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