HASfter 12 days of crossing the Mediterranean from Greece, the Olympic flame arrived off the coast of Marseille on Wednesday morning, aboard the three-masted Belem, noted an AFP journalist aboard a customs ship.
79 days before the official start of the Paris Olympic Games (July 26-August 11), one hundred years after the last Paris Olympics, France’s second city will host the arrival of the flame and the lighting ceremony of the first Olympic cauldron, around 7:45 p.m. (5:45 p.m. GMT), with some 150,000 people expected in the Old Port.
Shortly after 8:00 a.m., the legendary three-masted ship, former glory of the merchant navy, was still off the coast of Marseille harbor, beyond the Frioul islands and the Planier lighthouse, on a calm sea and under a radiant sun. .
The arrival ceremony of the Olympic flame will first begin with a gigantic maritime parade, with 1,024 boats registered to escort the Belem in the northern then southern harbors of the Phocaean city, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (09:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. GMT). Then the ship will make its majestic entry into the Old Port at 7:00 p.m. (5:00 p.m. GMT), before docking opposite Canebière, Marseille’s emblematic avenue.
It is then that the Olympic torch will come down from the ship, with the first bearer on French soil being the 2012 Olympic champion in the 50m freestyle, Florent Manaudou, whose sister Laure, Olympic champion and triple medalist in 2004, in Athens, had was the first French bearer in Greece, during the flame lighting ceremony in Olympia.
Then there will be the lighting ceremony of the first Olympic cauldron, on the Quai de la Fraternité, at 7:45 p.m. (5:45 p.m. GMT), at the end of a floating pontoon of around a hundred meters in the shape of an athletics track. Will Florent Manaudou be in charge of this mission or will he pass the baton to another personality for this symbolic ignition? The suspense remained total on this point Wednesday morning.
Read also
Less than 100 days before the Olympics, athletes and Parisians are preparing
