France Prepares for 2024 Olympics with ‘Soil’ from Ancient Olympia

In the runup to the Paris Olympics 2024, representatives of France’s Terre de Jeux 2024 label visited the birthplace of the Olympic Games in Greece – Ancient Olympia – where they collected 2,024 grams of soil to transport to Paris as a symbolic gesture.

The Terre de Jeux 2024 label invites local authorities to take action to promote more developed and inclusive participation in sport, at town and regional levels, and engages with various stakeholders in the sporting movement. Paris 2024 is bringing all the regions on board and including structures from the sporting movement and French communities abroad.

In the meantime, earlier this week, French media revealed that 12,000 runners are scheduled to participate in the Paris 2024 Olympic torch relay to run for 70-80 days and include some 700 cities along the route.

The Olympic Flame will, according to tradition, be lit at Ancient Olympia and transported from Greece to France by boat.

All-focus

“Today is a great day. The soil, the soul of Olympia, will travel from this sacred space to find itself in every corner of the friendly country of France and to convey a message of peace, fellowship and solidarity and the value of competition in life,” said Ancient Olympia Mayor George Georgiopoulos.

Following the event, the mayor hosted a dinner for the French delegation, where issues of wider cooperation were discussed in view of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

“The Olympic Games stand for values, ethos, passion and the human effort to progress and conquer. The modern Olympic Games have a responsibility to convey these values to the whole world and make them a way of life,” said Athanasios Tsivilis, member of the International Paralympic Committee and 1^st vice-president of the Hellenic Paralympic Committee.