AFP, Paris :
The organisers of the 2024 Paris Olympics announced the route of the torch relay on Friday, hoping to spark positive headlines after a difficult week when police raided their offices.
From Mont Saint Michel to the French Caribbean to the Chateau de Versailles, the relay will be a French tourism chief’s dream even if some local authorities declined to welcome it due to what they considered exorbitant costs.
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 week after police raided the headquarters of the organising committee, known as Cojo, 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 sports, and the home of the Paris 2024 Chief Executive Officer, Etienne Thobois, was also raided.
The searches are part of investigations by the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) into the contracts awarded for the Olympics.
The torch will be lit as is traditional in Olympia on April 16 then brought to Marseiille by the three-masted ship Belem.
Mindful of the chaos surrounding the last time the torch relay took place in France in 2008 for the Beijing Summer Games-due to protests denouncing China’s treatment of Tibet-there will be a strong security presence.
