PARIS (Reuters) – The Organizing Committee for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games received the Olympic flame from the Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) on Friday during a handover ceremony organized at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.
Two Greek torchbearers and two French torchbearers, swimmer with 20 Paralympic titles Béatrice Hess and Olympic ice dancing champion Gabriella Papadakis, carried the flame into the stadium of the first Olympic Games of the modern era in 1896.
The president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee Spyros Capralos then passed the torch, lit on April 16 in Olympia (Greece), to Tony Estanguet, president of Paris 2024.
The flame will spend the night in the French embassy in Greece, in Athens, before setting sail on Saturday aboard the three-masted Belem to cross the Mediterranean and reach Marseille on May 8, where more than 150,000 people are expected. on the Old Port.
The first bearer of the flame on French soil will be swimmer Florent Manaudou, Olympic 50m freestyle champion in 2012, while his sister Laure was the first French torchbearer in Olympia.
To secure the arrival of the flame in the Marseille city, 6,000 police officers and gendarmes will be deployed, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced on Friday on X.
“Nearly 6,000 police officers and gendarmes, elite units, a complete anti-drone fighter system, underwater and nautical resources… everything is ready for the arrival of the Olympic flame in Marseille on May 8 “, he wrote, hailing an “extraordinary device.”
(Written by Sophie Louet and Vincent Daheron, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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