PARIS: The slow-burning build-up to the Olympic opening reached its destination on Friday, as the torch relay ended its 68-stage trek through France, borne aloft by rapper Snoop Dogg, IOC president Thomas Bach and a string of beaming, waving, volunteer carriers.
“The relay is over,” said an official preparing to drive away from the last stop on the Canal Saint Martin in a car carrying the slogan “flame relay”. “Next stop: the cauldron.”
The heavily-guarded flame was headed into the centre of town ready for the final lap of its long journey, ending with the revelation of which star would run the final leg and light the cauldron to officially start the Games.
The last day of the relay was entitled the “Epilogue”. The torch had passed through some smarter Paris addresses, on July 14, the Bastille Day national holiday, and July 15, before circling the suburbs.
It started its final journey in Saint-Denis, home of the main Olympic Stadium and the Athletes´ Village, on Friday, before sailing down the still-industrial Canal Saint-Denis and under the peripherique motorway into the traditionally blue-collar 19th-arrondissement, braving occasional drizzle.
At the Athletes´ Village, Bach and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took turns as torchbearers. “Now the real thing starts,” Bach told a crowd of athletes. “We´re all in sports. We know that what happened until now is just training. You can feel the vibe among the athletes and the organisers.”
Yiech Pur Biel, who ran the 800m for the Refugee Olympic Team at Rio in 2016 and is an IOC committee member representing South Sudan, found the experience moving. “You want me to cry, or what?” he asked. “It is an honour to carry this torch for the firsttime.”
“I am representing millions of refugees who are not here today, and also representing different athletes, different diversities and different communities, and that is what makes me so emotional to be here.”
At the stadium, Snoop Dogg in a gold jacket before changing into his white relay tracksuit tried out his French. “Vive les Jeux Olympiques,” said the rapper, a special correspondent at the Games for US network NBC.
With the torch held aloft he danced, walked, ran and waved as the crowd shouted “Snoop!”. “Imagine he´s acting crazy, he takes the flame, he lights his joint with it!” said one spectator, Toufik.
From the stadium the flame crossed the canal in Aubervilliers for a series of boat rides, cruising past concrete factories and housing blocks to Paris accompanied by a crowd of spectators, security, officials and even canoeists in fancy dress.
With each torch holding enough fuel for six minutes, progress was interrupted by frequent, choreographed, stops as one torch lit the next and cameras snapped and whirred. “It doesn´t happen very often. It´s exceptional,” said Nathalie, who did not give her surname, from Aubervilliers as she stood on a bridge awaiting the flame.
The flame sailed under the peripherique and into Paris on a diesel-belching canal boat, the torch held aloft by its white-clad bearer to be greeted by a throng leaning over the rail on the next bridge.
The relay toured the Parc de la Villette, turned into the Parc des Nations housing the ´clubhouses´ of a string of countries, dominated by France in the Grande Halle, and including Brazil in a circus tent, and Mongolia in yurts.
The relay then took to the water and cruised down the Canal de l´Ourcq, as the growing crowd roared and took up a football chant, towards the Canal Saint-Martin and its final encounter with the symbolic cauldron.
