Lighting the flame of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Olympia: where does this ritual come from?

The flame of the 33rd Paris Olympics (July 26-Aug. 11) will be lit in the ancient Greek of Olympia on Tuesday, April 16. He will arrive in Marseille on May 8 aboard the three-masted ship Le Bélem. What you want to know about The origin and history of the most prominent symbol of Olympism, which comes from Greek mythology.

On July 26, 2024, the Olympic flame will light up the skies over Paris, after traveling several thousand kilometers from Olympia, Greece, in the southwest, from May 8 to July 26. It will be visible in Pau, Biarritz, Bordeaux, Libourne, Périgueux, Cognac and Angoulême, one hundred years after the last edition of the Summer Games in France.

Presented on July 25, 2023, the Olympic torch of these Paris Games, 70 cm high, 3. 5 cm in diameter and 1. 5 kg in weight, is made entirely of steel. ArcelorMittal provided 3 m long and 1. 50 m wide steel sheet packages to Guy Degrenne, who then carried out the cutting, casting, welding and finishing. The company has until December to purchase 2,000 torches.

The symbolism of this ritual, immutable since the fashionable Games, comes to us from Greek mythology when the Titan Prometheus stole the chimney of Olympus to give it to men, which he had just created despite Zeus’ prohibition. until he was punished by the king of the gods: chained to the top of Mount Caucasus, he suffered the eternal torture of seeing his liver devoured every day by an eagle, an organ that regenerated at dusk.

Ancient Greece kept alive the reminiscence of this mythical sacrifice, receiving the fireplace at the center of many devotional ceremonies, adding the Games. The sacred flame burned on the altar of the goddess in the center, Hestia, at Olympia, where the athletes’ banquet was held. It was carried out during testing. However, the flame was not connected to any relay at the time.

When Baron de Coubertin announced the first Olympic Games of the modern era in 1896, there was no flame or relay. The fire did not appear until thirty-two years later, in Amsterdam in 1928, when the organizers lit a cauldron in the Olympic Stadium. , resurrecting the ancient ritual, which would be repeated 4 years later in Los Angeles.

But it was in 1936, on the occasion of the Berlin Games organized by the Nazi leaders, that the relay was first linked to the flame. The concept is attributed to Carl Diem, a theorist of play and physical education, very close to Hitler’s party, and general secretary of the organizing committee. At the opening ceremony, German athlete Siegfried Eifrig became the first relay to light the cauldron of an Olympic stadium.

The relay and lighting of the Olympic flame, whose symbolism was recovered by the theory of the imposing race, which borrowed from ancient Greece the cult of the body, a detail of the Nazi regime’s propaganda. However, the ritual has been imposed and perpetuated in all future editions of the contest. Coded in 1952, it has since been followed through media and cameras around the world.

A few months before the Games – winter or summer – a ritual is celebrated in Greece, in Olympia, that recreates and conducts Greek mythology, on the ruins of the temple of the ancient goddess Hera, daughter of Cronus and Rhea, wife and sister of Zeus. and mother of Prometheus. The flame is lit by a parabolic mirror that concentrates the sun’s rays.

The chimney is then transported, in a ceramic urn, to the ancient stadium of Olympia, where it is transmitted to the torch of the first relay.

The flame of the Paris Games will be lit in Greece on April 26, 2024. He arrived in Marseilles by sea, aboard the majestic three-masted Belem, and began a wonderful popular festival on the city’s quays. Before a tour of France, 10,000 relays will pass through 64 territories over 68 days, from May 8 to July 26, 2024, when the relay will end in Paris on the occasion of the opening ceremony of the Games.

The Olympic torch will also pass through the West Indies, Mont-Saint-Michel, the caves of Lascaux, Paris, on July 14 and 15, and the Palace of Versailles on July 23.

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