The Flame is coming to Marseille

The Flame is coming to Marseille

by Philip Barker

It is always a special moment when the Olympic Flame arrives in the host nation of the Games.

A day of celebration has been planned to mark its arrival in Marseille on Wednesday (May 8).

It has been carried from the great Athenian port of Piraeus by the three-master sailing ship Belem.

Marseille was chosen as the landfall because of its heritage. It was some 2600 years ago that the Greeks established a settlement known as “Massalia.”

The first Torchbearer is set to be Florent Manaudou, Olympic swimming gold medallist in 2012 in the 50m freestyle,

His sister and fellow Olympic Champion Laure had been the first French bearer in Ancient Olympia three weeks earlier.

Although this will be the third time that Paris has hosted the Olympic Games, on the previous occasions in 1900 and 1924 there was no Olympic Flame.

The Flame did pass through Marseille in January 1992 en route to the Winter Games at Albertville, yet it is over 75 years since the Flame first crossed French soil. By coincidence, it was also the first year that it travelled across the sea.

In 1948 it was carried on two naval vessels, from Olympia to Corfu and then to Bari on the Italian coast.

After a journey across Italy and Switzerland, it was greeted at the International Olympic Committee Headquarters in Lausanne by Marie, widow of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

Within a few hours, it crossed the border into France and passed through Besançon, Nancy and Metz.

It then travelled into Luxembourg and Belgium.

Only one of those who carried the Flame in France all those years ago is known to still be alive.

Daniel  Rebiffé, now 99, had been a talented athlete serving with the Republican Guard, where  his talent as a runner had been spotted.

He had been invited to carry the Flame by the French Athletics Federation.

In 1948, the Torch Relay was conducted over a much shorter period of time and continued day and night.

“In the middle of the night, there were people waiting for us,” Rebiffé told La Nouvelle Republicaine many years later.

“It’s very moving when you arrive and everyone applauds you, everywhere we went, even in the small villages, there were people. There was even a fireworks display.”

Runners carried the Flame through Luxembourg and Belgium before the route took it back into France.

As the Flame entered Calais, a motorcycle escort flanked local athlete Gilbert Chretien, then 28 years of age, who ran through Calais with the Torch.

Then it was handed to another athlete, Jean Jovenaux of the Hellemes Club who carried it towards the port where the crew of the HMS Bicester were waiting to welcome it for the short passage across the Channel to Dover.

From there it travelled to Wembley, again overnight, where it arrived for the Opening Ceremony the following afternoon.

The Flame did not travel by sea again until 1960 when another sailing ship, the Amerigo Vespucci, carried it from Piraeus to Syracuse in Sicily to begin the domestic Relay to the Games in Rome.

In 1968 there was also a long sea voyage, across the Atlantic to the Bahamas. Swimmers met the ship to carry the Flame ashore before its journey continued to Mexico City for the Games.

A journey across the Atlantic is planned this time to visit French territories in the West Indies. It is also set to travel to Tahiti and New Caledonia in a voyage of the Oceans before returning to France.

So much time will it spend on the seas, that Mathieu Lehanneur has incorporated a water motif in his design of the Torch.

This will also recognise the fact that the Opening Ceremony will take place along the River Seine on July 26.

Local sailors have been invited to join a welcoming flotilla as the Belem arrives into harbour in Marseille this week. It is expected that well over a thousand craft are to provide a welcome full of emotion before the Belem moors at a pontoon which will resemble an athletics track.

“It is a joy for the city of Marseille to celebrate with the world its arrival in France. Welcoming this big celebration will be the opportunity for the people of Marseille to gather, to vibrate, and to share a big popular event on the Vieux Port. This global event will allow everyone to share a joyful moment of conviviality and solidarity,” Marseille Mayor Benoît Payan has promised.

The last time the Flame arrived across the water for the Games was in 1992 when a smaller craft arrived in Ampurias, also chosen because it was a former Greek settlement on the Spanish coast.

In 2012 the Flame began its journey with the backdrop of the seas at Land’s End in the extreme South West of the British mainland.

On both occasions the Torch Relay proved a great success as a prelude to highly successful Games.

Paris 2024 organisers hope the festivities in Marseille will have the same effect.