Heading for Marseille! Three months before the opening of the Paris-2024 Games, the three-masted Belem cast off on Saturday morning in the Greek port of Pire with the Olympic flame on board, triumphantly awaited on May 8 in the Phoenician city.
The president of the JOP organizing committee, Tony Estanguet, expressed great emotion as he began this journey, having received the flame the day before from the president of the Hellenic Olympic committee Spyros Capralos during a ceremony at the Panathinaque stadium.
Now, we are going to bring (her) back to France with this boat, the Belem, which also dates from 1896, the year of the first Olympic Games of the modern era. What a fantastic coincidence! he added.
Flagship of maritime heritage
A 58 meter ship, this flagship of French maritime heritage, classified as a historic monument since 1984, was in fact built in the 19th century at the Dubigeon shipyard in Nantes.
It carried out 33 commercial campaigns until 1914, transporting goods from Brazil, Guyana and the West Indies in its steel hull. Victim of competition from steamboats, it was saved from abandonment by the Duke of Westminster who transformed it into a yacht.
Then sold in 1921 to the brewer Arthur Ernest Guinness, the Belem docked in Venice in 1952 to become a training ship, before being bought in 1979 by the Caisse d’Epargne, which created the Belem Foundation a year later to launch its restoration.
On Saturday morning, the three-masted ship was accompanied off the port of Piraeus by the trirere Olympias, an ancient combat galley which belongs to the Greek navy, and by 25 sailboats, in front of several dozen curious people who observed under a sun the scene behind it. security grilles.
Spectators who should be much more numerous on May 8 arrive in Marseille, created around 600 BC by the Greeks under the name of Massalia.
Some 150,000 people are expected to welcome him and an exceptional security system is planned, including 6,000 members of the police mobilized.
This arrival will be the concrete start of a journey which will be fantastic for all French people, said the Minister of Sports and Games, Amlie Ouda-Castra, from Greece on Saturday.
According to her, it is also an opportunity to send a message to the whole world to tell them that we will welcome them and to put forward a message of peace.
On Sunday, the ship will first travel through the Corinth Canal, a 19th century feat of engineering built with the contribution of French banks and engineers.
Arrives under high security
Before entering the Old Port in May, the Belem will parade in the harbor of the Phoenician city and will be accompanied by 1,024 boats. Entertainment is planned on land and at sea all day long.
Still on the festivities side, Tony Estanguet announced Friday that swimmer Florent Manaudou, quadruple Olympic medalist and Olympic champion in the 50m freestyle in 2012, would be the first torchbearer on French soil.
The next day the Olympic relay will begin in the city, with planned stops at the Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica or the Stade Vlodrome.
The flame will then cross the country, visiting the West Indies and French Polynesia in particular, to Paris, where the opening ceremony of the Games will take place, scheduled for July 26 to August 11.
All in a tense geopolitical context marked in particular by the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
