the cauldrons that will welcome the flame during the relay look like anything but a cauldron

JO DE PARIS – A simple metal ring that will let the fire reflect on a corrugated surface. The Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games revealed this Monday, May 6, the design of the cauldrons which will welcome the Olympic flame on the evenings of its crossing of France.

The flame of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, lit on April 16 in Olympia in Greece, will arrive on May 8 in Marseille, aboard the three-masted Belem. From there, she will begin a journey across France, crossing 450 towns on the arm of 11,000 flame bearers, to reach Paris on July 26.

But for the night and during the celebrations, the precious flame will be placed in a “cauldron”. This one “will mark the spirits”hopes Delphine Moulin, director of the Paris-2024 celebrations, “since we will have the opportunity to light it 65 times on 65 celebration sites”.

The waves to represent the Seine

The cauldron, designed like the Olympic torch by designer Mathieu Lehanneur, takes the form of a stainless steel ring 1.35 m in diameter – and not a tank -, surmounting a base covered with a hydroformed sheet metal plate wavy. The whole thing weighs 95 kg, specifies the Team.

“It’s an extremely simple object”described Mathieu Lehanneur during a presentation to the press, “it’s a ring that seems to just be suspended, just floating above a base where we will find this play of water” present on the Olympic torch, aquatic ripples which “obviously tell us about the Seine”like a “opening ceremony teaser”.

The object, whose pale color was designed in “mixing a gold, silver and bronze medal”, “takes on its full meaning when it is set ablaze”estimates its designer, thanks to “reflections between this sheet metal in liquid relief and the flame which seems to float above”.

ArcelorMittal to manufacturing

Globally, “the idea for the cauldron was to make it a symbol of fraternity”since “this is the object around which we will gather every evening of the relay”, adds Mathieu Lehanneur. The ring constituted “the clearest, most immediate symbol to recall this fraternity”he estimated.

In total, 20 cauldrons will be manufactured by ArcelorMittal to cover the needs of the Olympic and Paralympic relay. Technically, the inside of the ring is pierced with 260 micro-holes of one and a half millimeters from which the gas will come out to maintain combustion, which will arrive through pipes hidden in the feet of the object.

The world’s second largest steelmaker, which also manufactures the Olympic torches and the Olympic rings for the Eiffel Tower, did not wish to reveal the amount of the contract for these three objects.

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