the route of the Olympic flame unveiled, it will pass through the Antilles, Mont-Saint-Michel and Versailles – Liberation

2023-06-23 12:14:21

The route is now official: from May 8 to July 26, 2024, the Olympic flame will cross French territory. On the program, 80 days of journey from the Old Port of Marseille to Paris, via the Overseas Territories.

A somewhat convoluted journey to be able to cross 60 departments. Symbolically lit in Olympia, Greece, the Olympic flame will touch French soil in the Old Port of Marseille in the spring of 2024. Then, for 80 days, it will criss-cross France over nearly 12,000 kilometres. It will pass in particular by Montpellier, Bordeaux and Poitiers, then by Mont-Saint-Michel before embarking from Brest for the Overseas Territories (from Cayenne in Guyana, to Papeete in Polynesia, via Guadeloupe, Martinique and the meeting). Finally, it will return to mainland France via Nice, to finish its course in Paris after a detour via the east of the country, and via the Château de Versailles.

Carried by 10,000 torchbearers, the Olympic flame, lit on April 16 in Greece, will arrive by boat on May 8 in Marseille. Then, 400 cities and five overseas territories will be crossed before arriving in Paris on July 26. The location of the lighting of the cauldron in the capital is still not officially decided, the hypothesis of the Eiffel Tower, several times mentioned, has not been confirmed by the boss of the Organizing Committee, Tony Estanguet.

The Olympic flame has not passed through France since 2008 in Paris, a day in April that turned into a fiasco. The passage of the torch in the capital had indeed been enamelled with numerous incidents, against a backdrop of tension between Beijing, organizer of the Olympic Games, and Tibet, many of whose sympathizers had come along the route to denounce China’s attitude.