The Olympic flame arrives in France on Wednesday where a highly choreographed ceremony and a crowd of 150,000 people will be a first major test for organisers and security forces ahead of the 2024 Paris Games.
The transfer of the flame onshore in the southern port of Marseille will mark the start of a 12,000-kilometre (7,500-mile) torch relay across France and it’s far-flung overseas territories.
Under bright skies and calm seas the Belem, the ship carrying the torch, was sighted off the coast of Marseille early on Wednesday.
Organisers are hoping the first public spectacle — just 79 days from the start of the Games — will help build excitement after a damaging row about ticket prices and concerns about security.
“It’s something we’ve been waiting for for a very long time,” chief organiser Tony Estanguet said Monday, referring to the 100 years since Paris last staged the Games. “The Games are coming home.”
France, which was also the host in 1900, sees itself at the heart of the modern Olympic movement after a French aristocrat, Pierre de Coubertin, revived the idea of the Games as practised by the Greeks until the 4th century BC.
After the Covid-hit edition in Tokyo in 2021 and the corruption-tainted Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016, the Paris Olympics are seen as an important moment for the sporting extravaganza.
A measure of public excitement will come when the flame is handed over on Wednesday evening from the Belem, a 19th-century French tall ship that has made a 12-day trip from Greece.
“We are going to do beautiful, grandiose, sober and accessible at the same time,” Marseille mayor Benoit Payan promised ahead of the ceremony, while recalling how his gritty port city was founded by Greek traders in 600 BC.
