Olympics - Athens presents Greek leg of the torch relay for Paris 2024 - Greek Olympic Committee Building, Athens, Greece - November 22, 2023 An image of the Olympic torch is displayed on a screen during the presentation REUTERS/Louiza Vradi
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece' Olympic rowing champion Stefanos Ntouskos will be the first torchbearer of the Paris 2024 Olympics relay after next year's lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia, Greece's Olympic Committee (HOC) said on Wednesday.
The Olympic flame will be lit in Greece's Olympia, birthplace of the ancient Games, on April 16 in a traditional ceremony with an actress playing a high priestess igniting the torch using a parabolic mirror and the sun.
The high priestess will pass the flame to Ntouskos, who won gold in the men's single sculls at the Tokyo Games in 2021, at the edge of the ancient Olympic stadium in Olympia.
After an 11-day relay across mainland Greece and seven of its islands, with the help of 600 torchbearers, the flame will be handed over to Paris Games organisers in Athens on April 26, with water polo Olympic silver medallist Ioannis Fountoulis as the final torchbearer.
The flame will depart on board a three-masted ship, the "Belem", for the French port city of Marseille, where the sailing competitions at the Olympics will take place, for the start of the French leg of the relay.
The Paris Olympics will be held from July 26-Aug. 11.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann, editing by Ed Osmond)
