swimmer Laure Manaudou will be the first French woman to carry the Olympic flame in Greece

The Olympic flame is due to be lit in Olympia, southern Greece, on Tuesday April 16.

We now know the name of the first French torchbearer on the flame route. Former swimmer Laure Manaudou, Olympic champion in the 400m freestyle in Athens in 2004, has been designated to carry the flame for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games after its lighting in Olympia (Greece), Tuesday April 16, announced the Olympic committee Greek Monday.

Laure Manaudou participated in three editions of the Olympic Games, in Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and London (2012). For her first Games, in the Greek capital, she was crowned Olympic champion in the 400m freestyle and won two additional medals, silver in the 800m freestyle and bronze in the 100m backstroke. She will take over from Greek rowing champion Stefanos Ntouskos, said the Greek Olympic Committee.

In the sanctuary of Olympia, in front of the 2,600-year-old ruins of the temple of Hera, the “high priestess”, dressed in a costume inspired by Antiquity, must light the flame in the middle of the day in front of some 600 guests, including the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach. This ritual in such a place is done “with great humility”explained to AFP Nikos Aliagas, the Franco-Greek television and radio host who will be the host.

After leaving Olympia, the flame will travel for eleven days and more than 5,000 kilometers across Greece. She will also climb the Acropolis rock to spend a night near the Parthenon.

Then the flame will be transmitted to the French organizers on April 26 in the Panathenaic stadium in Athens, the venue in which the first Olympic Games of the modern era were played in 1896. In Piraeus, the large port south of Athens, the Flamme will then board the three-masted Belem to disembark on May 8 in Marseille, in the south-east of France. It will begin a long relay through around sixty territories, until the opening ceremony on July 26.