The president, Emmanuel Macron, rekindled the flame of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Wednesday May 8 to celebrate the 79th anniversary of the 1945 Armistice ending the Second World War, before flying to Marseille to welcome another flame, an Olympic one.
The president first bowed to the statue of General de Gaulle, on the Champs-Elysées, before heading up the most famous avenue in the world in his car, accompanied by the Republican Guard on horseback. He then greeted veterans at length and had a selfie session with spectators seated in the stands.
The Head of State is then expected in Marseille, where he will participate at 7 p.m. in the official ceremony for the arrival of the Olympic flame in France. The three-masted Belem, which transported the flame from Greece to the Phoenician city, arrived Wednesday morning in the harbor of Marseille after twelve days at sea, welcomed by 150,000 people, a hundred years after the last Olympic Games in Marseille. summer in France.
The Olympic cauldron will be lit for the first time at 7:45 p.m. in the Old Port. Florent Manaudou, Olympic swimming champion in 2012, will be the first bearer of the flame, who will land on a floating athletics track installed for the occasion.
Previously, Emmanuel Macron must participate in the inauguration of the Tangram training center, opened by the maritime transport giant CMA CGM. Built in the heart of the Ecole nationale supérieure maritime (ENSM) in Marseille, this “place of training and innovation in the sustainable logistics and maritime transport professions of tomorrow”, according to the Elysée, will be dedicated to employees of the 'business.
