2023-07-25 08:44:05
The champagne-coloured torch for the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics embodies – through an unprecedented shape – the values that guided the development of the bid and the establishment of the Paris 2024 project.
The Paris 2024 torch with the Olympic rings (Credits – Paris 2024)
Fruit of the work of designer French Mathieu Lehanneur, with the assistance of the teams ofArcelorMittal for factory manufacturing, the Paris 2024 torch was revealed on Tuesday July 25, 2023, a year and a day before the last Olympic torchbearer set the cauldron alight at the end of the Opening Ceremony scheduled on the Seine.
Sober in its appearance, the torch is nonetheless a compendium of symbols and know-how.
As Mathieu Lehanneur has also explained by taking up a famous quote from the writer Victor Hugo:
The form is the bottom that rises to the surface.
Also, the Paris 2024 torch is resolutely in tune with the values embodied by the Olympic and Paralympic Games, with subtle nods to the foundations of the tricolor project.
Concretely, the object – which is both technical and technological – is characterized at first sight by a symmetrical form between the bottom and the top, and this for the first time in the history of the Games.
With this shape, the torch takes up the principles ofequality and parity conveyed by Paris 2024 since the bid phase, and which will materialize next year by the same number of female and male athletes registered in the Olympic events.
Moreover, this form is also intended to be a message of perfect osmosis between the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games which, for the French edition, already have the same emblem and the same slogan.
Beyond this desire to devote one of the leitmotif of Paris 2024, Mathieu Lehanneur also symbolized in a delicate way the relationship of the 2024 Games with the Seine, the Mediterranean Sea and the oceans.
The lower part of the torch is thus designed in corrugated steel to recall the water movements which will accompany the last weeks before the opening of the Olympic Games.
After being lit in Olympia on April 16, 2024 and having stayed in Greece, the cradle of the Games, the Olympic flame will indeed cross the Mediterranean aboard the White before winning the “Old Port” Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), on May 8, 2024, then set off on a journey around France, but also around the world, with an unprecedented crossing of the oceans towards five overseas territories.
Back in mainland France, and following final incursions into the country, the flame will navigate the Ile-de-France canals before embarking on the Seine where it will travel to the site of the fire of the cauldron on the evening of the Opening Ceremony, July 26, 2024.
Details of the top of the Paris 2024 torch (Credits – Paris 2024)
Because of its curves with clean lines, and its champagne color which symbolizes here the alliance of gold, silver, and bronze – the three colors of the Olympic and Paralympic medals – the torch is finally a marker ofappeasement.
In other words, the torch here takes up two other key notions of Paris 2024, namely generosity and fraternity between competitors and between spectators.
As summarized by Mathieu Lehanneur who worked on a sketch at the end of 2022 before proposing a single model, the one finally chosen by Paris 2024:
Designing the Games torch is a designer’s dream.
A dream that only happens once in a lifetime, like a miraculous encounter with great history. As ritual as it is magical, the torch is a mythical object.
A symbol of cohesion and sharing, it is the real key to entering the Games.
It will thus travel thousands of kilometres, transmitted from hand to hand, on land and at sea. For Paris 2024, and for the first time in its history, it plays on perfect symmetry to better speak to us of equality. I wanted it to be extremely pure, iconic and almost essential.
Simple as a hyphen and fluid as a flame.
The purity sought in the design of the object is also found in its lightness, with a weight of 1.5 kg, a size of 70 centimeters, a minimum diameter of 3.5 centimeters and a maximum of 10 centimeters, and finally a thickness of the steel sheets of only 0.7 millimeters.
In terms of the composition of the torch, the use of 100% recycled steel was favoured, with the mobilization of three French sites in the leader steel world, ArcelorMittalOfficial Partner of the 2024 Games.
The successive stages for the design of the object will thus take place in Châteauneuf (Loire), where the used steel will be melted, before the factory in Florange (Moselle) takes over to roll the steel on lines usually devoted to products intended for the automotive industry and the food packaging sector. The Woippy site (Moselle) will be mobilized to ensure the cutting of the thin sheets of steel to finally allow the shaping of some 2,000 torches.
After the steps of making the steel available and then working it, the last manufacturing phases will take place with partners ofArcelorMittal.
A goldsmith will then form the upper and lower parts of the torch according to the plans made by Mathieu Lehanneur, before an industrial group applies a high-tech coating to the entire surface, in particular to give the champagne tint which will characterize the Paris 2024 torch.
The Paris 2024 Olympic torch (Credits – Felipe Ribon)
If the number of copies planned may seem minimal compared to the number of torchbearers who will follow one another to carry the Olympic flame (10,000) and the Paralympic flame (1,000), Paris 2024 wanted to drastically reduce the use of torches which, in previous editions, might be counted at 10,000 to 12,000 copies.
With the promise to reuse the same torch up to ten times, the organizers intend more than ever to convey a message of energy sobriety and environmental responsibility.
After the torch, the cauldrons used during the stages of the Torch Relay in the spring of 2024, as well as the cauldron of the Games which will take pride of place in Paris for the duration of the event, will also bear the signature of Mathieu Lehanneur and will be presented later by Paris 2024.
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