The Olympic flame left Greece this Saturday aboard the historic three-masted sailing ship ‘Belem’, which set sail from the Athenian port of Piraeus towards Marseille, in France, host country of the 2024 Olympic Games.
Less than one hundred days before the scheduled date for the opening of the competition in Paris, the French sailboat began a historic journeysince it is the first time that the Olympic flame, which is lit every four years in ancient Olympia, It is transported by sea from Greece to the host nation of the Olympics.
Until leaving the port of Piraeus, the French ship was accompanied by 25 other sailboats and by the trireme (type of ancient ship invented in the 7th century BC) ‘Olympias’, of the Hellenic Navy.
The president of the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee, Toni Estanguet, was the one He delivered the sacred fire to the French delegation in charge of carrying it on the emblematic ship.
The first contemporary Olympic Games took place in Athens in 1896, the same year in which, on the other hand, the ‘Belem’, with square sails and a steel hull, He made his first sea crossing, when he left Nantes (France) towards Belem (Brazil).
Almost a century later, in 1984, the French vessel, the last three-masted sailing ship in the French merchant navy, It was designated a ‘historical monument’‘.
The Olympic flame is expected to arrive in Marseille on May 8 and from there it will be the cover on its last tour through France to Paris, where the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics will be held on July 26.
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