MARSEILLES.- Under a radiant sun, the Olympic flame of Paris 2024 carries out a maritime parade on the Marseille coast this Wednesday, before disembarking at night in the port of the Mediterranean city before some 150,000 people, one hundred years after the last Games held in France.
The Belem, a sailing ship with a century of history, arrived in Marseille in the morning and was greeted by the bagpipes, sirens and horns of the 1,024 vessels that came out to meet it, including a gigantic container ship “dressed” in the colors of the Paris 2024 Games.
After the parade along the entire Marseille coast, the Belem is scheduled to enter the port, at the same place where the Greek sailors arrived 2,600 years ago and founded Massalia.
“The arrival of the flame in Marseille is very symbolic, this Phoenician city founded by the Greeks is a symbol of our friendship and our common cultural ties,” the Greek ambassador to France, Dimitrios Zevelakis, told AFP, recalling that since ancient times, the Games are “an opportunity for peace.”
The Olympic flame arrives in Marseille 79 days before the start of the Paris 2024 Games (July 26 to August 11) amid an important security device.
In recent days, the nearly 3,000 boats moored in the port of Marseille were inspected and nearly 8,500 members of the security and emergency forces will ensure that the event takes place without the slightest incident.
All the hotels in the city center have been sold out for days.
Upon entering the port, the Belem will be welcomed by some 150,000 people, including French President Emmanuel Macron, with fireworks of “biodegradable recycled confetti”, by the music of the Marseille Philharmonic Orchestra and by the essential banners that the Marseille fans descend on the Velodrome stadium for every game their team plays.
Then the flame will disembark from Belem in the hands of the Olympic swimming champion Florent Manadou, originally from Marseille, who will be the first bearer of the torch on French territory.
Manadou will disembark via a pontoon shaped like an athletics track, a symbolic image that will be seen by 1 billion television viewers around the world.
“On Wednesday night, Marseille will be the center of the world,” the city’s mayor Benoît Payan proudly declared in an interview Tuesday with La Provence, one of the region’s leading newspapers.
What is still unknown is the identity of the person in charge of lighting the cauldron, which will remain illuminated all night until Thursday morning when the torch relay actually begins throughout French territory.
Despite the massive presence of Marseillais to receive the Olympic flame – many of them woke up early to have the best positions – the enthusiasm is not unanimous.
A thousand people demonstrated early in the afternoon to denounce the “Olympic Games for the rich”, with serious environmental consequences, and to demand the exclusion of Israel from the Games, for its actions in Gaza, as was done a few decades before with apartheid South Africa.
Road to Paris:
After arriving in Marseille and ‘resting’ in a cauldron located in the Velodrome stadium, the flame will begin a journey on Thursday that should take it to Paris on July 26.
This long “relay of the flame” will depart at dawn from the Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica, where the image of the golden Virgin that dominates the entire city is located, and over the next few weeks it will pass through emblematic places such as the Millau viaduct, the castles of the Loire, the D-Day beaches or Mont Saint-Michel.
The organizers of Paris 2024 hope that the arrival of the flame will serve to increase the enthusiasm of the French for a “spectacular” and “iconic” event, as its promoters have promised.
“It’s something we’ve been waiting for for a long time. One hundred years after the last Games. The Games are coming home,” the head of the organizing committee Tony Estanguet said on Monday.
Source: AFP
