PARIS: Tony Estanguet, the chief organiser of the 2024 Paris Olympics, said the route of the torch relay unveiled on Friday was “crazy” and “unbelievable”.
From Mont Saint Michel to the French Caribbean to the Chateau de Versailles, the 80-day relay will be a French tourism chief’s dream.
“This is the culmination of an enormous team effort over the past year and a half,” said Estanguet, a three-time Olympic canoeing champion, at the unveiling of the route.
“The route I find crazy, I find it unbelievable.”
Estanguet’s remarks came at the end of a difficult week when police raided the organisers’ offices in a probe focusing on the awarding of contracts.
Indeed the announcement of the route had been preceded by news that police had searched the homes of two high-ranking officials in the organising committee — Etienne Thobois, the Chief Executive Officer of Paris 2024, and Edouard Donnelly, the executive director of operations.
French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said it had not been “an easy moment for the (organising committee’s) teams, obviously”. The torch will be lit in Olympia in Greece, then brought by boat to the southern French port of Marseille on May 8 and will pass through 400 towns before arriving in Paris on July 26 for the opening ceremony.
The organisers have suffered a fraught few days after police raided the headquarters of the organising committee and the offices of Solideo, the body in charge of the Olympic construction sites.
They followed that up with another search on Wednesday, this time of Keneo, a Paris-based consulting firm specialising in sport that was founded.
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