Map shows the route in Greece for 2024.
by Philip Barker
Tokyo single sculls champion Stefanos Ntouskos has been chosen as the first torchbearer for Paris 2024 in Ancient Olympia next year.
Ntouskos is the first rower chosen to launch the Relay in the Ancient Stadium on April 16 after the Flame is lit from the rays of the sun although fellow sculler Alexandra Tsiavou carried it at the 2012 Handover Ceremony in Athens.
The Flame is typically carried from the stadium by a prominent Greek athlete and in recent years, long distance swimmer Spyros Giannotis, gold medal winning gymnast Eleftherios Petrounias and pistol shooting gold medallist Anna Korakaki have been selected as the first runners.
The Hellenic Olympic Committee have also launched a campaign to recruit 600 torchbearers who will carry the Flame across Greece in a journey of 5000 kilometres.
“The flame will pass through our homeland, on a route with its own symbolism and with the main purpose of highlighting the centuries-old tradition of our country, blessed places that have flourished since ancient times and have left their indelible mark on world history,”
The itinerary of the Greek domestic relay will last 11 days, longer than usual to permit it to visit as much of the country as possible.
On the first day it is set to pass through Ancient Ilida, home of Coroebus, the first recorded champion in the Games of antiquity.
On day two it will make its first visit to the port of Piraeus before setting out for Crete.
Unusually it will visit to Athens at the midpoint of the Relay, and is scheduled to be placed overnight at the top of the Acropolis on April 19.
It is then set to depart for Thessaloniki and Delphi.
On the penultimate day in Greece, it heads for Corfu and the Antirrio Bridge across the gulf of Corinth, a pathway first taken 20 years ago as part of the Athens 2004 Relay.
The itinerary includes Missolonghi in a symbolic visit to reflect French connections with the Greek revolution in 1821 and specifically as a tribute to the work of artist Eugène Delacroix who painted Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi.
The Flame is to be formally handed to Paris 2024 in a Ceremony at the Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens.
It is expected that the Flame will be brought into the stadium by the Greek men’s water polo team.
Tokyo Olympic silver medallist Giannis Fountoulis is to light the cauldron before Hellenic Olympic Committee President Spyros Capralos, an Olympic water polo player 40 years ago, is charged with passing the Flame into the safe keeping of French organisers.
It will then set sail for Marseille in the three masted ship Belem in a voyage which will provide memories of the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome when the Flame was also transported by sailing ship.
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