Before a crowd thronging the waterfront and hilltops of the ancient port city of Marseille, the Olympic flame arrived on French soil on Wednesday, beginning a 79-day relay across the country and its territories that will culminate in Paris with the start of the Olympic Games on July 26.
Florent Manaudou, France’s Olympic men’s 50 meters freestyle swimming champion in 2012, ushered the flame ashore from a historic three-masted ship, the Belem. It had left Greece on April 27, carrying the flame lit in Ancient Olympia 11 days before that.
After a branch of the French Air Force, known as the “Acrobatic Patrol,” traced the five Olympic rings in the sky, Mr. Manaudou walked the flame along a temporary jetty crafted to resemble track and field lanes, in front of a crowd estimated by local authorities at more than 225,000. Fireworks erupted in plumes of red, white and blue smoke — the colors of the French flag — when he reached land.
President Emmanuel Macron looked on with a smile, basking in the joyous atmosphere of a city he loves, as Mr. Manaudou handed the torch off to Nantenin Keïta, a French paralympic sprinter. The flame was then given to Jul, a popular Marseille rapper, who lit the Olympic cauldron to wild applause.
“We needed a powerful symbol, a strong symbol that somehow showed the radiant face of France,” Tony Estanguet, the head of the Paris Olympic Committee, told France 2 television of the city, which was founded some 2,600 years ago. “Marseille is a city of sport, passion, and festivities.”
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