17 April 2024

By Tim Koch

Tim Koch is fired up.

Today marks 100 days until the start of the Paris Olympic Games which will run from 26 July to 11 August. The Olympic Regatta will take place 27 July to 4 August at the Vaires-sur-Marne basin in Paris. Of course, the modern Olympic Regatta is a bit of a newcomer (it was cancelled in 1896 and so was first held in 1900). The senior international regatta, Henley Royal (1839), is 76 days away on 17 April. 

On 16 April, the Olympic flame was lit in Greece’s Olympia, birthplace of the ancient Games, in a ceremony with actress Mary Mina playing a High Priestess who ignites the torch using a parabolic mirror and the sun. She then passed the flame to Greek Olympic rowing champion Stefanos Ntouskos, Gold Medalist in the single sculls at Tokyo 2020, making him the first torchbearer of the 68-day Paris 2024 Olympic relay.

After an 11-day relay across Greece and its islands, the flame will be handed over to Paris Games organisers in Athens at the Panathenaic Stadium, the venue of the first modern Olympics in 1896. The next day, the flame will depart for the French port of Marseille on board a three-masted ship, the Belem, for the start of the French leg of the relay.

Sports journalist and Olympic historian Philip Barker was at the torch lighting ceremony and was kind enough to send HTBS pictures of the event. There are more of Philip’s photos on his Twitter account, @pbarkersport, and he is also author of The Story of the Olympic Torch (2012). My considerably less ambitious look at the history of the Olympic Torch Relay was in a pre-Rio Olympics post in May 2016.