The Olympic flame for the Paris 2024 Games will land in France on May 8, 2024, as planned in Marseille, the city’s mayor, Benoît Payan, announced on Sunday.
Benoît Payan announced on Sunday April 30 the date of the arrival of the Olympic flame in Marseille for the 2024 Olympic Games, before arriving in Paris on July 14, it will be May 8.
The mayor of Marseille invites the people of Marseilles to a “great popular festival organized in the Old Port to celebrate together the biggest sporting competition in the world and the millennial history of the founding of our city”.
Benoît Payan illustrated his point with a photo of the huge tifo deployed in a stand at the Vélodrome stadium before the start of the Ligue 1 match between OM and Auxerre, tifo representing the Olympic flame and its rings in the middle of the white and sky blue colors of Marseille and framed
on the sides by the blood and gold of Provence.
The arrival of the Olympic flame in Marseille had been known since the beginning of February, but the date was not known. As announced during a press conference at the Marseille town hall on February 3, the flame will land from the Bélem, one of the oldest three-masters in Europe still sailing, after a crossing of around ten days from Greece, where, as in each edition of the Games, she
will have been lit during a ceremony in Olympia.
“Marseille was founded by Greeks who came from Phocaea 2,600 years ago: by asking to welcome the flame to our shores, we wanted to reconnect with this great history of sharing, fraternity, diversity and solidarity”, recalled Benoît Payan in February.
The complete journey of the flame to Paris, after its arrival in Marseille, should be announced at the end of May, just over a year from the Games, said Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris Olympics organizing committee ( Cojo).
During the Games (July 26 to August 11, 2024), Marseille will host the sailing events as well as ten matches of the women’s and men’s football tournaments, at the Vélodrome stadium.
With AFP.
