Swimmer Laure Manaudou will be the first French torchbearer of the Olympic flame on Tuesday, after its lighting in the ancient site of Olympia, Greece. The Greek Olympic Committee made this announcement on Monday, on the eve of the event.
The Olympic 400m champion in 2004 in Athens will take over from Greek rower Stefanos Ntouskos, gold medalist in Tokyo in 2021, who will be the very first bearer of the flame, said the body, at almost 100 days of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics (July 26 – August 11).
The flame will then begin a 5,000 km journey across Greece over eleven days, from the island of Corfu, in the Ionian Sea, to Santorini in the Cyclades, via Kastellorizo, in the south-east of the country. She will also climb the Acropolis rock to spend a night near the Parthenon.
Arrival in France on May 8, in Marseille
Then the flame will be transmitted to the French organizers on April 26 in the Panathenaic stadium in Athens, the venue in which the first Olympic Games of the modern era were played in 1896. In Piraeus, the large port south of Athens, the Flamme will then board the three-masted Belem to disembark on May 8 in Marseille.
The symbol of the Olympic Games will then cross all of France, passing through the Antilles and French Polynesia, to arrive in Paris on the day of the opening ceremony, July 26.