Former Olympic champion Laura Flessel and world champion Camille Lacour will take part in the Olympic torch relay for the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, organizers have announced.
About 11,000 people will carry the Olympic flame, and among them 3,000 will do so as part of the relay, two of whom are Flessel, a two-time gold medalist in fencing in 1996, and Lacour, the five-time world swimming champion.
Pascal Gentil, bronze medalist in taekwondo in 2000 and 2004, will also be a participant in the relay.
Olympic rowing champion from Greece Stefanos Ntouskos will be the first after the fire lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia.
The Olympic flame will be lit in Greece, the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games, on April 16 in a traditional ceremony with an actress playing a high priestess lighting the torch using a parabolic mirror and the sun.
The High Priestess will pass the flame to Ntuskos, who won gold in the men’s skiff event at the 2021 Tokyo Games.
After an 11-day relay across mainland Greece and seven of its islands, with the help of 600 torchbearers, the flame will be handed over to the organizers of the Paris Games in Athens on April 26, with Olympic water polo silver medalist Ioannis Fountoulis as the final torchbearer.
The flame will travel aboard the three-masted ship Belém to the French port city of Marseille, where the sailing events of the Olympics will be held, for the start of the French leg of the relay.
The Olympics in Paris will be held from July 26 to August 11.
