Two weeks after French star swimmer Léon Marchand extinguished the Olympic flame at the end of the Paris Olympic Games, the spotlight is now on its Paralympic counterpart.
British Paralympians Helene Raynsford and Gregor Ewan lit the flame on Saturday in Stoke Mandeville, a village northwest of London that is widely considered the birthplace of the Paralympic Games.
The flame will now travel under the English Channel to France, where it will take a four-day journey from the Atlantic coast to the beaches of the Mediterranean and from the mountains of the Pyrenees to the Alps.
His journey will end on Wednesday during the opening ceremony of the Paralympics in Paris – with the lighting of a unique Olympic cauldron attached to a hot air balloon that will fly over the French capital every evening during the eleven days of competition.
The ceremonial lighting of the Paralympic Heritage Flame took place in Buckinghamshire, where the Stoke Mandeville Games were first held in 1948 for a small group of wheelchair athletes who had suffered spinal injuries during the Second World War.
The man behind the idea was Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurosurgeon who had fled Nazi Germany and worked at Britain’s Stoke Mandeville Hospital. At the time, a spinal cord injury was a death sentence and patients were prevented from moving. Guttmann had patients sit upright and exercise their muscles and came up with the idea of motivating them through competitions.
“I don’t know about you, but I can feel his presence here today, there’s no doubt about that,” Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee, said of Guttmann at the fire ceremony on Saturday.
Paris 2024 Organising Committee President Tony Estanguet said two weeks after the conclusion of the Olympic Games, the French capital was “proud and excited” to host the 17th edition of the Summer Paralympics, the first ever for France.
We are “ready to make it unique and unforgettable for France and the whole world,” said Estanguet.
The Stoke Mandeville Games later developed into the first Paralympic Games, which took place in Rome in 1960. The Heritage Flame ceremony in Stoke Mandeville was first held in the run-up to the Paralympics in London in 2012.
The flame will cross the sea on Sunday, just as its Olympic counterpart arrived in France from Greece in May – but this time through the Channel Tunnel to mark the start of the Paralympic relay.
A group of 24 British athletes will embark on the underwater journey through the 50km tunnel. Halfway through, they will hand the flame over to 24 French athletes who will bring it ashore in Calais. This will light 12 torches symbolising 11 days of competition and the opening ceremony.
Once on French soil, the twelve branches of the flame will move in different directions to mark the encore of the Paris Olympic Games and to reignite enthusiasm for the Games.
The 1,000 torchbearers will include former Paralympians, young Para-athletes, volunteers from Paralympic Federations, innovators in advanced technological support, people dedicating their lives to helping others with disabilities and people working in the not-for-profit sector to support caregivers.
They will carry the flame to 50 cities across the country to raise awareness of communities committed to promoting inclusion in sport and raising awareness about living with disabilities.
An extraordinary flame will be lit in Paris on Sunday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the French capital from Nazi German occupation during World War II.
The relay will highlight places committed to the development of disability sport, as well as places where famous Paralympians grew up, such as Lorient, home of two-time Paralympic sailing gold medalist Damien Seguin. The race will also stop in Blois, which has a sports complex named after Paralympic athlete Marie-Amélie Le Fur, who won nine medals, including two golds in Rio.
The relay race will pass through Châlons-en-Champagne, which has the only sports hall in France designed to facilitate access to sport for people with intellectual disabilities, and through Rouen, Chartres and Troyes, where a range of disciplines will be offered, from sledge hockey to para-tennis, para-triathlon, adapted baseball and para-climbing.
The flame stops in Chambly, which, with its three sports facilities adapted for disabled sports, has served as a training camp location alongside Deauville and Antibes.
On Wednesday, the twelve flames will become one again when the relay finishes in central Paris, visiting historic sites along the city’s famous boulevards and squares before the cauldron is lit during the three-hour opening show.
The cauldron is the first in Olympic history to be lit without fossil fuels. It uses water and electric light and is attached to a balloon. It made a breathtaking first flight at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
Every day of the Paralympics, the cauldron will fly more than 60 metres above the Tuileries Gardens from sunset to 2 a.m.
