Three Swiss Romands were masked flame bearers during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Caryl Cordt-Moller, Maxime Renaud and Guillaume Larrazabal, three professional parkour athletes, embodied the mysterious masked character.
RTSsport: What do you do for a living?
CARYL CORDT-MOLLER: I am still studying at the University of Lausanne in Sports Sciences.
MAXIME RENAUD: I teach at the Urban Move Academy, a new school in Geneva that mixes several disciplines.
GUILLAUME LARRAZABAL: Besides parkour, I am a medical courier.
RTSsport: How many of you played this character?
CARYL CORDT-MOLLER: In total, there were 9 of us torchbearers, six French and three Swiss.
RTSsport: How were you chosen to participate in such an event?
CARYL CORDT-MOLLER: We were selected through a close friend, whose name is Zenzel, a Parisian videographer, photographer and director. He is someone who has worked a lot with parkour people in his career and so he proposed this plan to us. That’s how we ended up in Paris.
RTSsport: How did the rehearsals go?
CARYL CORDT-MOLLER: We were spread out throughout the ceremony, on different sets. Everyone had their own, everyone had their own things to do and we all had different situations. For example, I was working with a lot of dancers, I had to go through the middle. Guillaume and Max were on rooftops, alone. For my part, I also had some rehearsals at Disneyland Paris, in warehouses, accompanied by all the dancers who were on my set. The others had their rehearsals directly on site, so on the rooftops or elsewhere depending on where they were.
RTSsport: Not too complicated to do parkour with this costume?
MAXIME RENAUD: The costume was super complex, with many layers. The most complicated thing about the mask was our field of vision. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to keep the costume.
RTSsport: Can you tell us more about this masked character?
CARYL CORDT-MOLLER: The artistic direction of the character wanted us to not know at all who was hiding behind this mask. The idea was to feed this mystery. This is certainly why it worked so well. Today, we can say that we are all very proud to have embodied this character.
RTSsport: Did you manage to keep it a secret despite the confidentiality clause?
MAXIME RENAUD: Personally, I only told my family and some of my trusted friends, because it was important to be discreet. If I told them, it was with as few details as possible. We had a 10-year confidentiality agreement, so we had to keep quiet about our performance at the Olympics for that period of time.
RTSsport: How did you manage to break this clause?
MAXIME RENAUD: Simon Nogueira’s identity was revealed to the general public, just after the ceremony. I think that’s what allowed us to reveal in turn that we were flame bearers.
GUILLAUME LARRAZABAL: Despite the confidentiality clause, Simon appeared in the newspapers, we don’t really know how. Zenzel fought afterwards so that we could reappear in the closing ceremony. It didn’t happen, but with the closing of the Paralympics and the end of the character, we were finally able to reveal ourselves. The character had finished his journey.
RTSsport: An anecdote to tell us?
GUILLAUME LARRAZABAL: I told my family about it. And, at a wedding in Bolivia where my family was while I was doing the show, I saw a post on Facebook with my name, claiming that it was a Bolivian who was the masked torchbearer. And there, it quickly took on a certain magnitude. A local TV contacted me. Obviously, I didn’t follow up. I was super stressed, I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t know who leaked the information today (he laughs).
CARYL CORDT-MOLLER: Since there was a certain craze around the character during the opening ceremony, they had the idea of having him reappear at the other ceremonies. They called me back to do the closing at the Stade de France. I had to fit in at the last minute a few days before the show. I had a small role of 2-3 minutes. And I had the chance to meet Tom Cruise. He was there, watching us. We chatted a little, the guy is very cool.
RTSsport: What impact did such an event have on parkour?
CARYL CORDT-MOLLER: This is an excellent advertisement for our discipline. It is a niche sport, not very popular. This has allowed it to have enormous visibility. Certainly its popularity will increase throughout the world.
RTSsport: When will parkour be an Olympic discipline?
CARYL CORDT-MOLLER: This is “THE” big question. For my part, I believe in it, even if there is very little chance for the moment, because it is very political.
GUILLAUME LARRAZABAL: Here in Switzerland alone we have two federations that govern parkour, the FSG and the SFPKA. One comes from gymnastics and the other directly from parkour. In one country alone, it’s complicated. So at the international level, it’s a pain… But parkour has its place at the Olympics. I hope it will work out…
Subject produced by Aydïn Mobarrez, Arthur Miffon and Lionel Küng
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