Paris Olympics torch relay will involve 10,000 runners
There will be 10,000 torchbearers to carry the Olympic flame as it
passes through some 60 French departments ahead of the 2024 Games, Paris
Olympic organizers announced on Tuesday.
aAfter the flame is lit in the traditional ceremony in Olympia,
Greece, it will arrive by sea in Marseille aboard the three-master Belem on May
8.
From there it will travel across France on its way to the Olympic
opening ceremony in the capital on July 26.
There has been speculation that the Olympic flame will be placed
on the Eiffel Tower, but the president of the organizing committee, Tony
Estanguet, told a press conference the final destination had not been decided.
"The Eiffel Tower has not been decided as the lighting
location for the cauldron," he said.
A novelty this time is "collective relays", which could
be groups of up to 24 people, with one carrying the torch.
There will be 3,000 collectives and 7,000 individual torchbearers,
including equal numbers of men and women aged 15 and over.
Each torchbearer will carry the flame for around 4 minutes over a
distance of 200 meters.
A third of the torchbearers will be selected by the organizing
committee and the sports bodies, another third by relay sponsors Coca-Cola and
French bank BPCE, another third by other Olympic partners, and the final 10
percent by the regions hosting the relay.
The International Olympic Committee forbids elected officials and
religious figures carrying the flame.
Some French departments refused to take part, deeming the
180,000-euro ($193,000) cost prohibitive.
The organizers said there would be "an itinerant bubble"
of security around the flame provided by the French gendarmes, police and local
security forces.
The Paralympic torch relay, which will arrive in Paris on August
28 for the opening of the Paralympic Games, will involve 1,000 torchbearers,
and will be shorter.
The record for most torch bearers is 20,000 ahead of the Beijing
summer Games in 2008. That relay passed through 19 countries, where it was
carried by more than 1,300 bearers, before reaching China. It covered a total
of 85,000 miles on its 130-day journey.
For the last Summer Olympics in Japan in 2021, the Olympic torch
relay was banned from public thoroughfares in many departments, including
Tokyo, because of Covid. For the same reason the relay ahead of the 2022 Winter
Games was reduced to three stages in Beijing.
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