The Paris 2024 Olympic Video games flame will likely be lit on April 16, marking the countdown to the July 26-Aug. 11 occasion within the French capital, organisers mentioned on Friday, confirming an earlier Reuters story.
The flame will likely be lit at Greece’s historic Olympia, the birthplace of the Video games, and can stay within the nation till its departure to France from Athens on April 27.
It is going to arrive in Marseille on Might 8.
The torch relay will keep in metropolitan France – notably going by way of Montpellier, Corsica, Bordeaux and the Mont Saint Michel – till June 7, when it’s going to go away the port metropolis of Brest by boat for a relay in France’s abroad territory. It is going to return to mainland France by boat on June 18.
The boat will likely be skippered by 2017 Vendee Globe winner Armel Le Cleac’h.
“It’s going to be spectacular and can showcase all our territories,” Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet mentioned at a ceremony on the French capital’s Sorbonne college.
The flame will then journey by way of Strasbourg, Reims and Lille amongst others earlier than a relay in Paris on July 14-15 – which can undergo the Pantheon and the Nationwide Meeting and Senate (the decrease and higher homes of parliament) – with some 400 cities being visited in complete.
The relays, which can characteristic round 10,000 torch bearers, will likely be captained by Olympic swimming gold medallists Laure and Florent Manaudou and para-athlete Dimitri Pavade.
In a conventional ceremony on the web site of the traditional Video games, an actress taking part in a excessive priestess lights the torch for each Video games — summer season or winter — utilizing a parabolic mirror earlier than passing the flame to the primary torchbearer on the fringe of the traditional Olympic stadium in Olympia.
Following a quick home relay in Greece the flame is then handed over to the host metropolis.
Paris organisers have mentioned they’ll use a three-masted ship the ‘Belem’ to take it the port metropolis of Marseille, the place the crusing competitions of the Olympics will happen.
Often the flame, held in a security lantern, is flown by airplane to the Olympic Video games host metropolis.
Marseille, based by the Greek settlers of Phocaea round 600 BC, is the place to begin of the French leg of the relay.
Paris 2024 organisers have been planning to put in the Olympic flame on the Eiffel Tower, a supply with direct data of the matter informed Reuters final month.
Friday’s ceremony offered organisers with a second of respite after their headquarters had been raided by police as a part of a preliminary investigation into alleged corruption on Tuesday.