Lit in Olympia in Greece as tradition dictates, the flame will arrive by sea in Marseille aboard the three-master Bélem on May 8, 2024.
It should cross around sixty departments and territories (54 metropolitan departments, 5 overseas territories and 5 territories, such as Montpellier). Major cities and emblematic sites are on the program: Mont Saint-Michel, the Bollaert stadium in Lens or the D-Day landing beaches. This course will end on July 26, 2024, the evening of the opening ceremony of the Games in Paris.
Yes, the overseas departments will also be mobilized since the flame will join, from Brest, Papeete, Guyana and the space site of Kourou, Reunion, Guadeloupe but also its neighbor, the island of Martinique before a return in Nice
The Organizing Committee demanded a participation of 180,000 euros to be able to cross a territory. Some local authorities and departmental councils deemed the cost prohibitive and did not respond to the call. “We are not at all in a logic of making money because the costs generated by the torch relay over three months are much higher than the contribution requested from the departments (…) The price has not not been fixed by Paris 2024 but we associated the various associations of elected officials who said that it was a price accessible to all the territories”, had defended Tony Estanguet, the boss of the Cojo.
About 10,000 people will take turns carrying it. New for this French edition, the collective relay: a group of 24 people, including a single bearer, can participate, to represent, for example, a sports federation. They will be 3,000 collectively and 7,000 individually, including people with disabilities, and gender parity, from the age of 15. Each torchbearer will carry the flame for about 4 minutes over a distance of 200 meters.
We do not even know yet if the Eiffel Tower leaves with the favor of the forecasts. Tony Estanguet made it clear that the place of final lighting was “not stopped” and “that the Eiffel Tower is not stopped as the place of lighting of the basin”.
Yes, over several thousand kilometers covered, the issue of security around the Olympic torch has become extremely significant in recent months. The social climate born of the pension reform has led to several calls from activists to disrupt the relay. Asked about this point, the Cojo explained that “a traveling bubble” would be formed around the flame and ensured by the State (gendarmerie, police), to which additional local security forces will be added in each territory.
