Throughout the day the sailboat Whitewho had collected the Olympic fire twelve days before in the Piraeusparaded its three masts along the Marseille coast before entering amid widespread applause at the Old Port of the second city in the country.
The organizers wanted to include numerous symbols in the ceremony, with which they want to relaunch the popular fervor for the Games that have not yet permeated the population.
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The sunny day accompanied the festive atmosphere and ended with some rain which allowed us to see over Marseilles a beautiful rainbow.
On board the sailboat, the Olympic swimming champion Florent Manaudou The Olympic fire that had traveled in a lamp passed to one of the torches along which it will make the journey to Paris.
The ship, the second largest sailboat in the country, approached the port at sunset and was received by the French Patrol, a formation of fighters that drew the Olympic rings with smoke in the sky of the city, which during the Games will host the sailing tests.
A pyrotechnic show accompanied the last meters of the ship in the port, while the city’s philharmonic orchestra played the notes of the tune that will accompany the Olympic events during the Games and La Marseillaise sung by the tenor Naestro played.
Once the boat was laid down, Manaudou descended with the torch in his hands and gave the first relief to the Paralympic athlete Nantenin Keïta, who passed it to the rapper Jul, who was in charge of lighting the cauldron that marks the arrival of the Olympic fire. , lit the past April 16 in Olympia.
The organizers had kept the identity of the person who would light that cauldron a secret and there had been speculation that he would do so. Zinedine Zidaneoriginally from Marseille.
The ceremony gave way to a series of festivities, marked by a great concert.
The relay of the flame will begin to travel through French territory this Wednesday and will end on July 26 in Paris at the end of the inauguration ceremony.
Until then, he will travel in the arms of 10,000 relievers through 64 departments of the country, including some overseas ones to which he will also go by boat, in one of the trimarans that compete in the round-the-world regattas.
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The first relays, through the streets of Paris, will be led this Wednesday by some important sports personalities such as the basketball players Tony Parker or Nando de Colo, the footballers Didier Drogba, Jean Pierre Papin, Éric di Meco or the current captain of the Olympique from Marseille, Valentin Rongier, the swimmers Fabien Gilot and Frédérick Bousquet or the fencer Pascale Trinquet-Hachin.
The reception ceremony for the Olympic flame took place amid impressive security measures, with the deployment of 6,000 agents, the largest the country’s second city has ever known in its history. EFE