Paris 2024 Unveils Grand Relais de la Flamme

Want to help the Olympic flame reach Paris? 

There's still time for nominations -- deadline 15 July -- for those seeking to fill one of the 10,000 torchbearer segments unveiled this Olympic Day. 

Each torchbearer will transport the flame about 200 meters, or just over 650 feet, which is shorter than my occasional Midtown Atlanta walks for lunch at Mary Mac's Tea Room. 

In press materials, this is estimated at four minutes per segment for the average torchbearer. Less officially that's 19 to 22 seconds for Usain Bolt or Florence Griffith-Joyner, respectively, the world and Olympic record holders for the same distance. 

With help from Google Translate, I call it la petite segment (though la petite tranche sounds more dramatic). 

During an online media preview held Tuesday morning, 2024 Olympic press team members showcased next year's torch relay route and other details under embargo until noon today in Paris. Since the first media question on the call regarded the in-progress police raid at Paris 2024's headquarters, it was not immediately clear how much resonated with other reporters in attendance. 

For this writer, the scope of next year's five-ringed route is impressive, as much for its blend of torch relay traditions with new elements as for its first-time destinations exotiques. 

Of course, the map starts in Olympia, Greece, where the Hellenic Olympic Committee will welcome the host city to launch the relay with rays from the sun on April 16, with VIP and Greek runners helping whisk aloft torches toward an April 26 ceremony at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens. 

Borrowing from past relays, the Olympic flame and its entourage will next travel by ship -- specifically aboard the triple-masted Belem -- embarking from the Port of Piraeus on April 27, heading westward to Marseille in time for a May 8 arrival ceremony. Historians may appreciate the Belem enjoyed its maiden voyage in 1896, the year Athens hosted the first modern Olympiad. 

I'm not sure how the route overlaps with past torch relays on French soil, but the chosen path generally hugs the southern coast and border -- including a hop to Corsica -- then north through several western towns until arriving at coastal Brest, where on June 7 things get intéressante thanks to the crew of another sailing vessel, the impressive Maxi Banque Populaire XI, capable of getting the Flamme Olympique across the Atlantic in eight days. This video provides a peek aboard.

Simultaneous to this oceanic crossing for the flame's first visits to Guadeloupe (June 15) and Martinique (June 17), other segments will be carried at ceremonies in French destinations including Guyana (June 9), Reunion (June 12) and French Polynesia (June 13), where weeks later Olympic surfers will ride the waves. Sidebar: Martinique is where Humphrey Bogart got quizzed RE: whistling in "To Have and Have Not."

Not sure how -- my guess is by jet (as it was not made clear in the press kit) -- but on June 18 the flame returns to France tout suite, where voilà, the route resumes in Nice for its five-week final march to the City of Lights. 

One noted curiosité: though the eastern map pinpoints a visit to 1924 Olympic host Chamonix, the route was charted sans Albertville and Grenoble, perhaps intentionally, which may leave each city's chambre de commerce to exclaim sacrebleu and others with their culotte dans une liasse.

No matter the possible flaming snubs, of the 2024 route -- it's a lot! 

Not the longest nor most elaborate torch relay, but definitely an expansive plan that will give tens of thousands of islanders or South American mainland and French residents a new or renewed option to experience the moving Olympic flame tradition. 

Those seeking to complete nominations may find helpful the Paris organizing committee's FAQ for the process.

As for the crew of Maxi Banque Populaire XI, they'll be looking for Mother Nature to follow Lauren Bacall's instructions to put [her] lips together and blow. 

Images courtesy Paris 2024, CFP on CGTN.com, and this Dailymotion link. Lauren Bacall photo via We Are Movie Geeks. Florence Griffith Joyner photo via Paul Hellstern/Daily Oklahoman