Ancient Olympia to Host the Flame at the Paris 2024 Olympics
In ancient Olympia, the site of the ancient Games, the holy flame for the Paris 2024 Olympics will be kindled on Tuesday. The torch relay will be an epic journey that will take it from the Acropolis to the South Pacific.
The event, which is conducted every two years for the summer and winter Olympics in the tiny Peloponnese village in southwest Greece where the Olympics originated in 776 BCE, is anticipated to draw hundreds of dignitaries and onlookers.
Viewers will be able to see the torch relay activities for the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak forced scaled-back competitions for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
Using a parabolic polished mirror, Greek actress Mary Mina lit the Olympic flame during a rehearsal on Monday. She then gave it to the first torch bearer, 2020 Olympic rower Stefanos Ntouskos.
It will serve as a fallback in the event that Tuesday’s predicted cloud cover prevents the mirror from igniting.
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Headlining the roster of dignitaries are International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou. The event will take place among the remains of the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera.
Amelie Oudea-Castera, the French minister of sports, and Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, will also be there.
The Olympic flame ceremony’s choreographer and creative director, Artemis Ignatiou, said of the ceremony’s dance performance to state TV ERT, “We hear nature, the rustling of the leaves, there is a sacred silence.”
Sometimes we get the impression that we are floating above the earth. It’s like to going back in time,” the woman said.
The Olympic Anthem will be performed by Joyce DiDonato, an American mezzo-soprano.
The torch is a throwback to the ancient Olympics, when a holy light was lit for the duration of the competition. In 1936, the custom was brought back at the Berlin Games.
According to reports in Greece, retired French swimmer Laure Manaudou, who took home a gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, is a heavy favorite to be France’s first torchbearer in Olympia.
About 600 torchbearers will travel 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) across 41 communities during the 11-day relay on Greek land.
transported via ship
At a ceremony on April 26 at the Panathenaic Stadium, which is made entirely of marble and hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, the Olympic torch will be given to the organizers of Paris 2024.
The 89-year-old Greek singer Nana Mouskouri, who has a large fan base around the globe, has been asked to perform at the occasion.
The torch will set sail for France on April 27 aboard the three-masted barque Belem, built in the 19th century and launched just after the 1896 Games in Athens.
For over twenty years, the Belem, a historical landmark in France, operated trade routes to Brazil, Guyana, and the Caribbean.
It is anticipated that the final three-mast steel-hulled boat in France will arrive in Marseille on May 8.
The flame will then be carried throughout 64 French regions by 10,000 torchbearers.
Over its 12,000-kilometer (7,500-mile) trip across continental France and overseas French possessions in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific, it will pass through 400 cities and several tourist destinations.
It will serve as the focal point of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on July 26 beside the Seine River. This is the first time the event has not taken place in the main stadium of the Games.
