- The Olympic torch was lit on Tuesday in ancient Olympia
- The torch will be taken to Marseille next month, before traveling to Paris.
- The 2024 Olympic Games open in Paris on July 26
The torch for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was lit in ancient Olympia on Tuesday in a traditional ceremony, marking the final stretch of seven years of preparation for the start of the Games on July 26.
Greek actress Mary Mina, who plays the role of the high priestess, lit the torch using a backup flame instead of a parabolic mirror due to cloudy skies for the start of a relay in Greece and France.
It will culminate with the lighting of the Olympic flame in the French capital at the opening ceremony.
From the ancient stadium at Olympia, a relay of torchbearers will carry the flame more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) across Greece until it is handed over to Paris Games organizers in Athens on April 26.
The first torchbearer was Greek rower Stefanos Douskos, a gold medalist in 2021 in Tokyo. He will race towards a nearby monument containing the heart of French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the driving force behind the modern revival of the games.
The torch of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was lit this Tuesday in ancient Olympia
The next runner will be Laure Manaudou, a French swimmer who won three medals in Athens in 2004. She will hand over to senior European Union official Margaritis Schinas, a Greek.
The flame will then travel from the port of Piraeus in Athens in the Belema French three-masted sailing ship built in 1896, the year of the first modern games in Athens.
The flame will be carried to Marseille – a city founded by Greek settlers about 2,600 years ago – on May 8 and then gradually reach Paris before the opening ceremony on July 26.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the Olympic flame will pass the site of the 2015 Islamist attack on the Bataclan concert hall, as well as the Shoah Memorial, as it moves through Paris in July.
“This torch is a message of peace, a message of friendship between peoples, which is even stronger at a time when the world is in such a bad situation,” Hidalgo told France 2 TV from Olympia, Greece.
In Paris, torchbearers will also pass historic sites such as the Place de la Concorde and the National Assembly and through working-class neighborhoods, including Belleville or Porte de la Chapelle in the east and north, Hidalgo said.
Paris City Hall, which will host the flame on July 14, when France celebrates Bastille Day, will remain open all night so that “visitors and Parisians can see this symbol of fraternal transmission throughout the planet,” he added. .
The flame will be taken to Marseille on May 8 before arriving in Paris.
IOC President Thomas Bach speaks at the torch lighting ceremony in Greece
The Shoah Memorial in Paris is dedicated to Jewish history during World War II.
In November 2015, a group of Islamist gunmen attacked the Bataclan music venue, as well as bars, restaurants and the Stade de France sports stadium, killing a total of 130 people.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he would strive for a truce at the Olympics, adding that he had the Middle East conflict as well as the war in Ukraine and Sudan on his mind.