Paris 2024 | Olympic torch relay begins after lighting in Greece

(Olympia) Almost 100 days before the opening of the Paris Olympics, the Olympic torch relay began Tuesday after its lighting in Olympia, Greece, during a ceremony marked by messages of hope in an international context wrought up.

In the ancient sanctuary of Olympia, in front of the 2,600-year-old ruins of the Temple of Hera, the flame for the Games which will be held from July 26 to August 11 was lit around 12:15 p.m. local time (5:15 a.m. local time). ballast).

But due to cloudy skies at the site of the first Olympic Games in ancient times, the lighting could not be done with the sun’s rays as ancient tradition dictates.

It was carried out with a reserve flame kept during Monday’s dress rehearsal thanks to the intervention of “priestesses” dressed in long light dresses inspired by the clothing of the ancient Greeks.

The president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the German Thomas Bach, insisted on the message of “hope” carried by the Olympic flame, a symbol of peace in Antiquity, lit in an international climate marked in particular by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

” Hope ”

“In all of our hearts, we long for something that brings us together again, something that unifies us, something that gives us hope,” he stressed.

“The Olympic flame that we are lighting today symbolizes this hope,” also affirmed the German in the presence of the President of the Hellenic Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, the French Minister of Sports and the Olympic Games Amélie Oudéa-Castéra and from the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

The president of the organizing committee for the Paris Olympics, Tony Estanguet, also saw in these Olympics “more than ever a force of inspiration (…) for all of us and for future generations”.

The torch was then taken to the ancient stadium to be handed over to the first torchbearer, the Greek Stefanos Ntouskos, Olympic rowing champion in Tokyo in 2021, who also brandished an olive branch.

All smiles, swimmer Laure Manaudou, who won her Olympic title in the 400m freestyle at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, succeeded her as the first French relay runner.

“We’re counting on you to light the fire!” », Tony Estanguet had told him shortly before.

The Olympic flame will now begin a vast journey which will take it to Paris on July 26.

Its journey from Olympia to the host city of the Olympic Games is one of the most symbolic events associated with the Games, with the torchbearers bringing a message of peace.

600 torchbearers

Six hundred torchbearers will pass the flame around during the eleven days when it will crisscross Greece, covering 5,000 km through seven islands, ten archaeological sites and the Rock of the Acropolis where it will spend a night next to the Parthenon.

She will finally reach the port of Piraeus, south of Athens, where she will board the three-masted Belém on April 26 bound for Marseille, in the south-east of France, where some 150,000 people are expected to arrive. welcome May 8.

From this date, the symbol of the Olympic Games will cross all of France, passing through the Antilles and French Polynesia, to arrive in Paris on the day of the opening ceremony.

In Paris, on the eve of the lighting of the flame, French President Emmanuel Macron launched the countdown to the Olympics on Monday by reassuring about security around the opening ceremony planned on the Seine – while discussing solutions fallback, “limited to the Trocadéro” or in the Stade de France, in the event of a terrorist threat.

Like every two years (alternation of the Summer Games and the Winter Games), the flame lighting ceremony took place near the stadium where the young athletes of Antiquity played their first Games in the VIII^e century BC.

At the time, women were prohibited from participating, and remained so until the abolition of the Ancient Games in 393 AD. AD

But in Paris, “these will be the very first Olympic Games with perfect gender parity,” recalled Thomas Bach.