Thomas Pesquet, bearer of the Olympic flame and guest this Wednesday on the France Bleu Provence set before the arrival of the flame in the Old Port in Marseille, has experienced many grandiose days and recognizes that this one “can be part of the Memorables“.
“There is, more or less, the same excitement in the air, the same, same vibes, as they say today, as for my two takeoffs, this kind of feeling that something is happening, that we want to be there, as for the historical side, the show will be there. So I’m happy to find this.”
“I was surprised actually, because we arrived on foot, we crossed a few streets to get here and really, I was surprised by the number of people who are already there, entire families, people from everywhere, of all ages. It’s really a very nice kind of melting pot to be here, so we hope that everyone will have a very good evening.”
“The flame went twice in space, off, obviously, because we’re not going to have fun keeping it on, but as a symbol, it was the Americans, the Russians do that, we have it, we didn’t do it . We would have liked to do it for Paris 2024, but unfortunately, we don’t have any Europeans and even fewer French people up there at the moment, the timing doesn’t necessarily work.“
You are going to carry the Olympic torch, Thomas Pesquet, when we went where you went, is it a detail or is it still something that has enormous importance?
This is important becausethere are a lot of symbols in fact behind that, the world is watching, it’s not just a Franco-French thing that we’re doing, but obviously, it concerns the people here, in a local way, that’s normal. But the world is watching, we must not forget that, I think. We are keen to give a good image of France.
People have a good image, we sometimes tend to try to believe the opposite, but it’s not true. I work a lot abroad and I still see that people have a lot of lots of love for France, so we’re going to try to reinforce that a little bit by doing the best we can to make the party go well. I try to do my part, my stone in the building.
Would you also have dreamed of being an athlete? Well, you’ve already done something huge, but when you were young, were the Olympic Games and sport something that stuck with you too?
Yes, yes, it was frankly, I didn’t have the level at all. So like that, the question didn’t arise. So much the better. But it was appealing because I think the feeling you get from playing or participating in competitions like that in front of an audience, winning… These things are really difficult to find elsewhere. So afterwards, the only problem with that is that, at some point, it stops.
That’s the tragedy, I think, of sporting careers. We must manage to renew ourselves, to reinvent ourselves behind. But these sensations, I think that in music, if we play in front of tens of thousands of people, if we have this incredible energy, that we can have an audience, I think that it’s really sensations that are incredible. We’ll see that this summer. I would rather live on the side of the public, of the public, not in the international station.
