The Tuileries Gardens will soon be without the Olympic cauldron. Installed next to the Louvre Museum since the beginning of the Paris Olympics, the Olympic flame will be extinguished this Sunday, September 8, during the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games. To immortalize the last moments of the lit cauldron, Parisians and tourists came in large numbers to take a last photo in front of the installation.
“It will remain an event that you can only experience once in a lifetime and that’s what makes it so beautiful,” a tourist in the capital who was there to enjoy the excitement of the Games told BFMTV. “It was a great party, it will give a new perspective on the Paralympic Games,” added another visitor.
The emotion still present
For the volunteers who were involved in organizing the event, emotion was running high. “Everything has an end… It was a great experience, it will remain a very good memory that we will treasure,” says a volunteer, with a lump in her throat.
For schools all over France, these Paralympic Games were an opportunity to go on school trips to discover the events. “We saw the judo Paralympics and we climbed the Eiffel Tower and now we’re going to do a treasure hunt,” explains a student from the Arcachon Basin.
The preservation of the Olympic cauldron is desired by many Parisians and the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo. At the beginning of August, Emmanuel Macron, who is responsible for the decision as head of state, said he was “thinking” about this subject: “We will look at all of this in due course, with of course the technical analyses, feasibility analyses, perspective analyses too, because we must preserve the historical views of Paris. But I believe that in any case, it makes many people dream today,” he declared.
- RMC Sport