Coming from the water to set fire, the Olympic flame will arrive by sailboat in Marseille

“It’s in Marseille that it all begins”. Tony Estanguet, president of the organizing committee for the Paris 2024 Games, announced that the Olympic flame will start its journey across the country from the most Greek of French cities. She will make a “spectacular” entry into the Old Port aboard the Bélem, a famous three-masted sailboat, one of the oldest in Europe. The latter will have been recovered the flame in Athens after it had been rekindled in Olympia, where the very first Games in history were organized, nearly 2,800 years ago.

Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille, was delighted with this news, and was able to announce that young people from Marseilles from the working-class neighborhoods of the city will embark on the school ship for this ten-day navigation.

The precise date of arrival of the flame in Marseille is not yet known. That of his last stage, in Paris, has however been unveiled. It will be for July 14, national holiday, twelve days before the start of the competitions. In the meantime, the Olympic flame will travel through sixty departments, i.e. those who have agreed to pay the sum of 180,000 euros, the amount of the ticket to see the flame pass through their homes.

In the Bouches-du-Rhône, the flame will pass through 8 sites which remain to be defined. “It will be difficult to choose,” warned Martine Vassal, the president of the department. The entire route of the flame in France will be announced at the end of May, organizers said.

His arrival in Marseille will launch the start of “spectacular, popular and sporting” festivities, promised the three-time Olympic canoe champion, Tony Estanguet. And to add, with a nod to the link that the city maintains with its football club: “forever the first! “.

France hosts its first Summer Olympics since 1924. A hundred years will therefore separate these two events. Hoping that “one flame can hide another”, engaged Renaud Muselier, the president of the Paca region, who is a candidate for the organization of the Winter Games of 2030 or 2034.

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