In October 2021, Tony Estanguet, President of the Organizing Committee for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, during a speech at the convention of the Association of French departments, lit the file of the Olympic Games flame. of Paris 2024. Starting point of a spider’s web to give sparkle, echo and warmth to the event. Since then, the journey of the symbol of the Games has been the fruit of “hundreds of hours of meetings, a titanic task”, confides Grégory Murac, deputy director of the torch relay. 10,000 carriers (including 3,000 participants in collective relays) will follow one another along a route that aims to highlight “stories and places that created France, its natural heritage, Unesco sites… which will highlight the knowledge -doing French, inventiveness, creativity, the vitality of sport”, underlines Michaël Aloïsio, chief of staff of the president of the COJOP of Paris 2024. The wait ended this Friday at the Sorbonne when the veil was lifted on the course.

The flame will be lit on April 16, 2024 in Olympia, according to a precise ritual with the rays of the sun. After nine days of relay in Greece, the handover ceremony will take place on April 26 in the Panathenaic stadium in Athens. On April 27, departing from the port of Piraeus, the flame will board the Belem. It will dock in Marseille on May 8. Starting point of 68 days of parade which will end on July 26 when the cauldron will be set ablaze during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, probably on the side of the Eiffel Tower.

The flame entered the modern Games in 1928 in Amsterdam. The first relay was launched in 1936 in Berlin. Since 1952, the flame has been symbolically lit in Olympia, in the sanctuary where the Ancient Games took place, before making its long journey to the host city. Before the Olympic Games in Albertville in 1992, in December 1991, the flame had arrived from Athens aboard the Concorde.

From Marseille (May 8, 2024), to Paris (July 26), 64 territories (including 5 overseas territories: Guyana, Réunion, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe and Martinique), 65 stopover towns (which will organize each time a day of celebration and sport on a dedicated slab) and more than 400 towns crossed will make up the route map. The bearers of the flame (candidates, appointed by a jury or sponsored) will carry out relays of 200 m. In 4 minutes. From June 7 to 17, the relay of the oceans will be deployed in parallel, from Brest to Martinique (read below).

“The Torch Relay is a highly anticipated highlight: it announces the start of the celebrations, and gives a wonderful taste of each new edition of the Games. At Paris 2024, with more than two months of uninterrupted festivities, it’s a wonderful adventure that we’re going to experience together, all over the territory, embarking millions of French men and women in the wake of the Games (…) Much more than a tour of France in 68 days, it will show many of the incredible riches of our country: its heritage, its natural landscapes, its museums, its live art shows… and of course, its inhabitants. Guided by their exceptional athlete captains, Mona Francis, Florent Manaudou, Laure Manaudou, and Dimitri Pavadé, those who are called Les Éclaireuses et les Éclaireurs du Relais de la Flamme de Paris 2024 will bring to life the energies of sport and Games everywhere in France”, summarizes Tony Estanguet, president of the OCOG.

To be hooked on the map, the departments had to pay 150,000 euros excluding taxes. An amount that had sparked controversy. Those who refused will not be crossed, with the exception of towns or communities which have organized themselves to finance the operation such as Bordeaux, Libourne, Montpellier, Sète, Millau, La Baule, Vichy and its agglomeration, Chartres and its metropolis. Participation will cover “one third of the cost of organizing the flame’s journey”, announces Michaël Aloïsio.

Grégory Murac details the system: “It’s not a continuous relay, it’s a certain number of segments that follow one another during the day: four segments with the main convoy which crosses cities with a large population base and three with a smaller convoy that goes to look for places that we want to highlight. The relay which draws a time line, not a physical line, is articulated, as for thirty years, on a system of connection between the points checked by the torchbearers (one hundred per day approximately, one day per department). The rule being that you can never have the flame visible on the torch in two places at the same time.

The typical day will stretch from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. with the passage of the last torchbearer to light the cauldron which will then be extinguished. The lanterns (safety lamps) then travel to the next stage before lighting a new torch the next day. The procession, which will not be comparable to the Tour de France cycling caravan (there will be no distribution of goodies), will be made up of minibuses and motorcycles. “We tried to imagine a convoy that was sporty to avoid putting too many vehicles and we pushed the reflection around soft mobility”, assures Delphine Moulin, director of the celebrations.

Geographical treasures (the Verdon regional park, the caves of Lascaux, the archaeological site of Alésia, the medieval city of Carcassonne, the Palace of Versailles, etc.), architectural masterpieces (Mont-Saint-Michel, castles of the Loire…) and places of remembrance (Verdun Memorial, Landing beaches, visit of national figures Joan of Arc in Orléans, Robert Schuman in Scy-Chazelles or Charles de Gaulle in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises…) will be at the honor during a route that will also shed light on the biodiversity of France (from Mont Canigou to the Verdon Regional Natural Park, from the Île aux Moines to the Mont-Blanc valley, from the banks of the Loire to the Pic du Midi de Bigorre ) or French engineering (Millau viaduct, Kourou space centre).

Culture will also be part of the celebration with the Louvre-Lens, the steps of the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, the comic strip museum in Angoulême, the Puy du Fou or the arenas of Arles. Eight concerts will punctuate the journey. And sport will not be forgotten, from the waves of Biarritz or Teahupo’o to Mont Ventoux, from the cobblestones of Wallers-Arenberg to the stadiums of Marseille or Geoffroy-Guichard to Saint-Étienne, via the Simonne-Mathieu court in Roland-Garros and the Yves-du-Manoir stadium in Colombes (setting for athletics and ceremonies in 1924, field hockey in 2024).

A sensitive file, the safety of the route of the flame will be ensured in close collaboration with the State services. Michaël Aloïsio presents: “The principle of the security bubble is that we do not secure the entire route but the object, with an itinerant device around the course of the flame. ” Grégory Murac adds: “The purpose of the security bubble is to prevent intrusions into the device or people who would like to seize the torch. There will also be a team of ten people, the guardians of the flame, we worked with the State, the police and gendarmerie forces through an internal competition. These people will only have eyes for this flame. They will sleep with the flame, will pass it on to the first torchbearer. They must ensure that it is always on, that it can light each of the torchbearers’ torches. And if the flame goes out, there will always be the lanterns (safety lamps), an emanation of a little brother or a little sister of the mother flame of Olympia. »

The Paralympic relay will be unveiled at the start of the school year. Michaël Aloïsio confides: “It will be more compact over time, made up of 1000 flame bearers, we will cover the whole territory but differently. The flame will seek its essence in Stoke Mandeville in England, the historic cradle of Paralympic history”. To extend the adventure…