Emmanuel Macron expressed his satisfaction on Wednesday with the arrival of the Olympic flame in Marseille, after ‘several years of preparation’. The Olympic Games made their debut in France with the lighting of the first cauldron of the 2024 Paris Olympics on Wednesday 8 May in Marseille, in the presence of Jul, a French rap star, in front of a crowd gathered on the Old Port of France’s second-largest city

‘The flame is now on French soil, marking the conclusion of several years of preparation. I still have fond memories of July 2017, when we won the bid in Lausanne,’ Emmanuel Macron told TF1 and France 2 after the ceremony. The award of the 2024 Olympic Games to Paris was confirmed on July 31, 2017, after Los Angeles withdrew from the race to host the Games.

Years later, ‘the flame is here, the Games are here and are part of French people’s lives’, the President stressed. He added that the flame would travel through ‘400 municipalities until the opening ceremony’, making these ‘the most decentralised Games in our history’.

With 79 days to go until the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris on 26 July, the Olympic flame arrived in France after a 12-day journey from its native Greece. It was first carried ashore from the three-masted Belem by Florent Manaudou, Olympic swimming champion in London in 2012, to the cheers of a large crowd.

After a few steps on a floating pontoon in the shape of an athletics track, the Marseille swimmer passed the torch to Nantenin Keita, Paralympic athletics champion and daughter of the famous Malian musician Salif Keita, illustrating the fusion between the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the end, it was passed on to the Marseilles rapper Jul, who had the honour of lighting the Olympic flame for the night, before starting its relay across France on Thursday morning.

Emmanuel Macron described the arrival of the flame and the Belem as a ‘tremendous success’, underlining the ‘unprecedented effort’ of the security forces mobilised for the event. ‘I want our compatriots to understand that this is a moment of unity and that they are capable of it and can be proud of it’, he added.