A year before the start, Paris 2024 revealed its torch inspired by equality, water and peacefulness.

For all that it represents for the Olympic tradition, it is hard to believe that an imaginary timeline of the sacred fire from Ancient Greece to the present day could have several empty lockers.

Clinging as we are to endearing stories, we take for granted what emerges from some engravings rescued from the ruins of Olympia that attest to the omnipresence of the Olympic fire as a source of inspiration for our ancient heroes.

However, as is the case with other symbols of the magnitude of the anthem or the flag, fire as a bridge between Antiquity and current times only reappeared in Amsterdam 1928. Even so. It wasn’t until Berlin 1936 that both the torches and the now legendary relays with their final destination in the stadium’s cauldron were reborn.

After four years later, both in Amsterdam and in Los Angeles, the cauldron was turned on without a pole -on Dutch soil, it was not an athlete who was in charge but an employee of the local gas company-, a custom began on German soil that today is indivisible from the games themselves.

Fritz Schilgen, a local athlete specialized in mid-distance and cross-country events, was in charge of the last of the more than 3800 relays that arrived in Germany from Greece crossing lands in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria. This is how long was the journey of the first Olympic torch designed by Peter Wolf and Walter Lemcke. And that’s how important the figure of Schilgen ended up being, who was invited as an advisor to the Munich Organizing Committee in 1972. Nothing comparable to the last homage paid to him by Olympism: at the age of 90, he turned on the cauldron again at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin as part of the journey that ended in Atlanta in 1996.

Behind every Olympic torch are hidden thousands of stories. As many as will appear when the next Parisian appointment has passed.

A post shared by Paris2024 (@paris2024)

In exactly one year, the Olympic fire will illuminate Paris. We will have to wait until July 26, 2024 to know the answer to two of the big questions of the opening ceremony: who will be in charge of carrying the torch in the last few meters and how will the cauldron be lit.

Meanwhile, one of the certainties that we already have is what the torch will be like, which will begin its journey in France on May 8 next year and will be carried by 10,000 people until the relay that will light the cauldron. Champagne-colored, it is inspired by three of the symbols of Paris 2024: equality, water and peacefulness.

“Following our logic of building bridges between the Olympic and Paralympic Games, both share the same emblem and the same mascot. In Paris 2024 we will also have the same design for the torch,” said Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee. He added: “This item embodies all editions of the Games. When we look back at the story, each torch is prettier than the last and each one is unique. All countries are trying to show their creativity and we can see it. It’s an aesthetic object that counts for something.”

“Equality is symbolized through perfect symmetry and water through the effects of waves, relief and vibration, while reconciliation with soft curves,” explained designer Mathieu Lehanneur and explained: “We work as sculptors, we didn’t want to add things. From the initial idea, we wanted to go back to the essence of what we were looking for and use as little material as possible and achieve maximum lightness”.

“Designing the torch is the dream of creatives. It’s a dream that only happens once in a lifetime, like a miraculous encounter with history. As ritual as it is magical, the torch is a mythical object. It is a symbol of cohesion and sharing; it is the real key to the Games. For Paris 2024, and for the first time in history, it plays in perfect symmetry to better talk to us about equality,” Lehanneur highlighted.

The torch will have a size of 70 centimeters, will weigh 1.5 kilos and 2,000 will be built, although, between the Olympic and Paralympic Games, there will be 11,000 relievers. “It was a real discussion, a key element that took us a few months to discuss. We knew that our torch is a real aspect to propose as a legacy, as an aspirational element, but at the same time our promise in Paris 2024 is to try to be sustainable. I think we made the right decision, we make this balance between sustainability and legacy,” said Celebrations Director Delphine Moulin.

On April 16, the traditional ceremony will take place in which the Olympic fire will be lit in Olympia and will arrive in Marseille on May 8 from Athens. The torch’s journey will last 68 days, it will pass through 64 territories in France and within a year, on July 26, 2024, the cauldron will be lit.

Beyond what the Olympic fire represents, an even more powerful message comes through what the relays represent.

In the run-up to Rio 2016, the ever-present outraged on social media spoke out strongly against actors, models or influencers participating in the torchlight posts. The legend explains that, far from being a ritual reserved for athletes, the idea is to invite different representatives of society or simply residents of the neighborhood through which the tour takes place to join the celebration.

Not without a touch of romanticism, we were left with the wonderful message that, almost 3,000 years ago, the townspeople used burning branches so that, hand in hand, everyone would know that, very soon, the time would come to celebrate the gods of the stadium.