The route of the Olympic flame was unveiled on Friday by the organizers of the Paris 2024 Games. Lit on April 16, 2024 in Olympia, Greece, as tradition dictates, the flame will arrive by sea in Marseille aboard the three-master Le Belem on May 8, 2024. It will then cross around sixty departments and territories and will complete its journey through France on July 26, 2024, the evening of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
Published on: 06/23/2023 – 11:30 Modified on: 06/23/2023 – 12:21
Mont-Saint-Michel, West Indies, Palace of Versailles: for more than two months from May 8, 2024, the Olympic flame will cross more than 400 French cities, a journey which is intended to be “festive”, according to the organizers of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024 despite threats of disruption by activists.
The course, which was unveiled on Friday June 23, is now official. If all the local authorities have not responded to the call, partly for some because of the cost [de 180 000 euros] considered excessive, the Olympic flame will still cross 64 territories for more than two months. After being lit, as tradition dictates, on April 16, 2024 in Olympia, the torch will carry out a nine-day relay in Greece, before taking the boat to reach France.
But not just any boat. The flame will sail on the Mediterranean aboard the mythical Belem, one of the oldest European three-masters, to arrive on May 8 in Marseille, the date of the start of its journey in France which will bring it to Paris on July 26.
On the road to #Paris2024
The Olympic Torch Relay will make our territories shine!
Here is the journey of 68 days of celebrations and celebrations in France.
For more details on the cities crossed, we pass the baton to the departments ???? pic.twitter.com/u4uLKjlH0n
— Paris 2024 (@Paris2024) June 23, 2023
The location of the lighting of the cauldron in Paris has still not officially been decided, the hypothesis of the Eiffel Tower, which has been mentioned several times, has not been confirmed by the boss of the Cojo Tony Estanguet.
Between these dates, it will therefore cross 64 territories, including five overseas territories, and 400 cities. The course will not be linear, with chip jumps to connect the partner territories.
“Iconic places”
Obviously, like the route of the Tour de France, the flame, treated with the respect worthy of a Head of State, will be accompanied by a caravan, made up of sponsors. And as for the Tour de France, it will pass through emblematic places in the country.
After its arrival in Marseille, it will cross several cities in the South, such as Toulon, Montpellier, Carcassonne, Toulouse, before passing through the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, and spinning in the Dordogne, then in Charente, and in Vendée.
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Arrived in Finistère after going to Mont-Saint-Michel, she will then take another boat from Brest: she will indeed join the Antilles aboard the “Relais des Océans”, the Maxi Banque Populaire XI trimaran skippered by Armel Le Cléac’h, to spend nine days there, before returning to mainland France.
She will then attack France from the east face, starting from the south to arrive in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, and finish in the Paris region, visiting in particular the Château de Versailles, or even that of Chambord. “Iconic places”, sums up Paris-2024.
As for the torchbearers, whose selection process is still in progress, they will be 10,000, including 3,000 collectively. Each torchbearer will carry the flame for about four minutes over a distance of 200 meters.
The challenge of securing the course
One third of the torch bearers will be selected by the organizing committee and the sports movement, another third by the torch relay sponsors BPCE (banking and insurance) and Coca-Cola, another third by the other partners of the Olympic Games and the last 10% by the territories hosting the flame.
The Olympic flame has not passed through France since 2008 in Paris, a day in April that turned into a fiasco. The passage of the torch in the capital had indeed been enamelled with numerous incidents, against a backdrop of tension between Beijing, organizer of the Olympic Games, and Tibet, many of whose sympathizers had come along the route to denounce China’s attitude.
“It’s true that this moment was significant, especially on securing the flame,” recalls a source close to the Cojo. And this issue of security around the torch relay has recently become a little more significant.
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Securing the route is ensured by the State services which have taken “very seriously”, according to a source close to the Cojo, the threats weighing on the crossing of the flame, in particular because of the social climate born of the reform of the retreats and many scattered calls to disrupt the course.
Without wanting to detail the device, the committee assured that the flame would be protected by a “travelling security bubble” which will protect the flame and its carriers.
With AFP
