Stadiums rise at Paris landmarks 100 days from Olympics

Paris, Apr. 16: In front of the Eiffel Tower, stands are emerging from a tangle of scaffolding, while at the historic Place de la Concorde, forklift trucks buzz around carrying building materials.

Across and around Paris, plans that have been on the drawing board for seven years since the city won the right to host the 2024 Olympics are turning into reality, 100 days from the start of the world's biggest sporting event.

The flurry of activity, including the hoisting of giant Olympic rings onto the Eiffel Tower, is giving Parisians the chance to glimpse for the first time how the 17-day extravaganza will transform the city.

"You can see them putting the infrastructure up," sports fan and Paris resident Valentin Fargier, 27, told AFP. "The city's being tidied up and the monuments are clean. It's going to be great."

Unlike in previous Olympics, only two new permanent sports venues have been built for Paris 2024 in a deliberate change of strategy to make the Games cheaper and more "sober."

An 8,000-seat arena that will host the badminton and rhythmic gymnastics was inaugurated in a deprived part of northern Paris in February, while President Emmanuel Macron cut the ribbon at a new aquatics centre in a nearby suburb on April 4.

Elsewhere, 95 percent of the sport is set to take place in existing venues, or in the temporary stands that are sprouting like mushrooms ahead of the start of the Games on July 26 and the Paralympics on August 28.

In total, 200,000 seats are being installed in temporary venues.

The river Seine will host the open-water swimming -- pollution permitting -- as well as the spectacular opening ceremony that will see teams sail down it in a flotilla of boats in front of up to half a million spectators.

Organisers insist that everything from the infrastructure to their budget is under control.

"We're ready for this final straight," chief organiser Tony Estanguet told reporters at a press conference to mark the 100-day countdown last week. "We've built up a lot of confidence and peace of mind."

He noted that construction work was often "the biggest challenge that poses problems for the organisation of the Games."

"The timetable has been perfectly respected, which is a relief for us," he said. The main doubts concern the extravagant water-borne opening ceremony -- the first time an Olympics has opened outside the main athletics stadium.

Olympic flame to be lit in Olympia

Nearly 100 days before the 2024 Paris Games open, the Olympic flame will be lit in ancient Olympia Tuesday for a torch relay stretching from the Acropolis to French Polynesia.

For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic imposed toned-down events for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2022 Beijing Winter Games, spectators will be able to attend the torch relay events.

The ritual will see actresses in the role of ancient priestesses coaxing the Olympic flame into life with the help of a parabolic polished mirror in Olympia, southwestern Greece, where the Games were born in 776 BC. The ceremony is conducted at the ruins of the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera, and sets off the Olympic torch relay that marks the countdown for each Games.

The torch harks back to the ancient Olympics, when a sacred flame burned throughout the Games. The tradition was revived in 1936 for the Berlin Games.

The first relay runner will be Greece's 2020 Olympics rowing champion Stefanos Douskos.

Retired French swimmer Laure Manaudou, who won her first gold medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics, is strongly tipped to be France's first torchbearer in Olympia, according to sources in Greece.

During the 11-day relay on Greek soil, some 600 torchbearers will carry the flame over a distance of 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) through 41 municipalities. (AFP)