Earlier than a crowd thronging the waterfront and hilltops of the traditional port metropolis of Marseille, the Olympic flame arrived on French soil on Wednesday, starting a 79-day relay throughout the nation and its territories that may culminate in Paris with the beginning of the Olympic Video games on July 26.
Florent Manaudou, France’s Olympic males’s 50 meters freestyle swimming champion in 2012, ushered the flame ashore from a historic three-masted ship, the Belem. It had left Greece on April 27, carrying the flame lit in Historical Olympia 11 days earlier than that.
After a department of the French Air Drive, often known as the “Acrobatic Patrol,” traced the 5 Olympic rings within the sky, Mr. Manaudou walked the flame alongside a brief jetty crafted to resemble monitor and discipline lanes, in entrance of a crowd estimated by native authorities at greater than 225,000. Fireworks erupted in plumes of purple, white and blue smoke — the colours of the French flag — when he reached land.
President Emmanuel Macron appeared on with a smile, basking within the joyous environment of a metropolis he loves, as Mr. Manaudou handed the torch of to Nantenin Keïta, a French paralympic sprinter. The flame was then given to Jul, a preferred Marseille rapper, who lit the Olympic cauldron to wild applause.
“We wanted a strong image, a robust image that someway confirmed the radiant face of France,” Tony Estanguet, the top of the Paris Olympic Committee, advised France 2 tv of the town, which was based some 2,600 years in the past. “Marseille is a metropolis of sport, ardour, and festivities.”
France has been the goal of repeated Islamist terrorist assaults over the previous decade, and safety was tight on Wednesday, with entry to the port space managed by greater than 6,000 regulation enforcement officers. Gérald Darmanin, the inside minister and a potential presidential candidate, known as the extent of safety “unprecedented.”
Lucas Poujade, 23, a enterprise pupil from the Auvergne area of central France, was on trip close to Marseille and determined to come back witness the festivities.
“That is as soon as in a lifetime,” he stated. “I believe individuals from Marseille are proud and completely satisfied that the video games will not be solely hosted in Paris. For many who won’t have the possibility to see one of many occasions, at the least it is a solution to really feel concerned.”
Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille, was jubilant over a spectacle he described as shifting and filled with surprises. “We will say that Marseille is the Olympic champion of environment,” he stated.
The relay carrying the flame will start on Thursday. The torch bearers will embrace former star gamers for Olympique de Marseille, the native soccer membership. Amongst them will probably be Didier Drogba and Jean-Pierre Papin. Alexandre Mazzia, a three-star chef with an acclaimed restaurant in Marseille, who will present meals for athletes through the Video games, may also bear the torch.
“I’m completely satisfied and proud to be a part of this distinctive occasion,” Mr. Mazzia stated in a short interview. He added that carrying the flame, for him, represented “values of fraternity, of engagement, of artisanal work and of French savoir-faire.”
The frilly relay will contain greater than 10,000 individuals and can embrace France’s abroad departments in addition to mainland France and Corsica. The torch, on a type of grand tour of the Francophone world, goes to Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Réunion, between June 9 and June 17. It should make a primary cease in Paris on July 14 and 15, earlier than returning there on July 26 for its set up within the Jardin des Tuileries, between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde.
One thought behind the relay is to knit collectively France, which has not been totally persuaded by the prospect of the Olympics. A survey final month by the Ipsos polling institute discovered that solely 53 % of French individuals have been within the Video games; some 37 % of individuals residing outdoors of Paris felt totally detached. Whereas curiosity and enthusiasm have been rising in current months because the Video games strategy, there may be nothing resembling unanimity in France.
An opinion piece revealed on Wednesday within the left-wing each day Libération and written by a number of native officers in Marseille, together with two deputy mayors, illustrated a number of the considerations.
“Let’s open our eyes,” they wrote. “The flame is arriving in a fortress Europe that has forgotten its traditions of greeting and hospitality,” they added, alluding to makes an attempt by far-right events to clamp down on rising immigration. The Olympics would harm the native atmosphere, they stated, and in Paris “will speed up the phenomena of gentrification and expulsion of poor individuals.”
Marseille is a conventional rival of Paris, in sporting phrases and most others. Mr. Macron, a supporter of Olympique de Marseille, has been a daily customer to the town all through his seven-year presidency. He has tried, with solely partial success, to deal with the acute social issues — medicine, violent crime, excessive poverty — that plague components of the Mediterranean metropolis.
“There are all the time doubts, there may be all the time a France that doubts, and a few amongst us who solely wish to see issues,” Mr. Macron advised journalists after the ceremony. However, he added, “now I imagine we’ve entered the video games, the video games are right here, the flame is right here!”
Actually on Wednesday the environment in Marseille was resolutely upbeat. Music stuffed the air and the sounds of horns rose from an armada of greater than 1,000 boats that got here to welcome the Belem beneath blue skies within the calm, glittering harbor.
The climate smiled on a metropolis that has identified greater than its justifiable share of violence and hardship, whereas retaining a fierce delight and the openness of a port metropolis. As an emblem of the promise of the French Olympics, the selection of Marseille appeared apt.
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.
