The three-masted Belem cast off on Saturday in the port of Piraeus, near Athens, and began sailing towards France with the flame of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on board. She is expected in Guadeloupe on May 15.
The sailboat is expected on May 8 in Marseille, where the torch relay across France will then begin, until the opening ceremony of the Games on July 26.
“It’s such a great emotion,” declared on this occasion Tony Estanguet, president of the JOP organizing committee, who had symbolically received the flame the day before in Athens, from the hands of the president of the Hellenic Olympic committee Spyros Capralos.
“Now we are going to bring (her) back to France with this boat, the Belem, which also dates from 1896”, the year of the first Olympic Games of the modern era, “what a fantastic coincidence!” he added.
Lit on April 16 in Olympia, the Olympic flame was handed over to the French organizers on Friday during a ceremony at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.
She must now reach France, where she will arrive via Marseille, a city founded by the Greeks around 600 BC, on May 8.
Before that, on Sunday, the ship will travel through the Corinth Canal, a 19th-century feat of engineering built with input from French banks and engineers.
Before entering the Old Port, the Belem will parade in the harbor of the Phocaean city and will be accompanied by 1,024 boats. Entertainment is planned on land and at sea all day long.
The next day the Olympic relay will begin in the city, with stops planned at the Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica or the Stade Vélodrome.
She will then cross the country, visiting in particular the Antilles and French Polynesia, to Paris, where the opening ceremony of the Games, scheduled for July 26 to August 11, will take place.
