The Olympic flame began its journey through Paris at the end of the Bastille Day parade on July 14, with former soccer star Thierry Henry the first to carry it 12 days before the opening ceremony.
The torch relay began at 11:45 a.m. on Avenue Foch, at the end of a military parade whose size and route were modified in light of preparations for hosting the Olympic Games.
In the final scene of the military parade, it appeared in the hands of the rider Thibaut Valette, gold medalist in Rio 2016, then the flame was handed over in front of the presidential platform to a group of young people and then carried to the Champs-Élysées where Thierry Henry began its journey.
On the “most beautiful street in the world”, with the huge French flag waving under the Arc de Triomphe, the coach of the French Olympic football team, dressed all in white, was the first torchbearer amid the applause of a few hundred spectators.
The flame will cross the heart of the capital for about 12 hours, until the Paris City Hall where it will spend the night before resuming its Parisian journey, which will end on Monday evening (8:45 p.m.) at the Place de la République, with a free concert.
In two days, it must cover about 60 km, carried by about 540 people, 200 on Sunday, and 340 on Monday, supervised by 1,600 police officers and gendarmes, out of 18,000 security forces mobilized for this event.
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