Two giants of French sport lit a cauldron never before seen at the Olympic Games

The former athlete Marie-Jose Perec and the judoka Teddy Riner They were the last relay bearers of the Olympic flame and those in charge of lighting the cauldron of the Olympic Games as the closing of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024held this Friday in the French capital.

The two athletes, among the most popular in France, took the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Garden and ran to the cauldron, located at the base of a hot-air balloon, which will remain lit until the close of the Games on August 11. What was totally unprecedented in Olympic history is that the famous cauldron rose into the sky and, apparently, will remain floating there.

Perec and Riner, both Olympic champions, are two monuments of French sport. ‘Marie-Jo’ remains in the collective imagination of France more than 30 years after her exploits on the athletics track, the only athlete from her country to boast three gold medals (200m in Barcelona 1992, double 200m and 400m in Atlanta 1996) and the standard-bearer of the French delegation at the 1996 Games.

“The Games are my life!” repeats the 56-year-old from Guadeloupe, whose name was in all the bets to be the last reliever. She also explained several times that her dream was to light the cauldron as Muhammad Ali did in 1996, legendary boxer and figure of the fight for civil rights in the United States and idol of her grandmother, to whom the athlete was very close.

“If I were chosen, it would be like winning another gold medal, for everything it represents,” she said a few months ago. “I would become a kind of little Mohamed Ali of my grandmother,” she thrilled everyone.

Unlike Perec, Riner is still active at 35 years old and in Paris 2024 he is looking to become the first judoka in history to win gold in the heavyweight division, which would make him, if he is not already, the best athlete in the history of this discipline.

Also originally from Guadeloupe, the Caribbean island north of Venezuela and southeast of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, the 2.04m and 140kg giant won gold in the top category of judo at London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 and the team title at Tokyo 2020 (an edition held in 2021 due to the pandemic).

He also has two Olympic bronze medals (2008 and 2021) and eleven world titles between 2007 and 2023. His defeat in the quarter-finals in Tokyo against the Russian Temerlan Bashaev only increased his insatiable appetite. Since then he has been undefeated. In the judo world, everyone knows him as the ‘Boss’.

While waiting to see if she can win another gold medal, Riner will at least take home from Paris 2024 the unforgettable memory of the lighting of the cauldron, which for the first time in history was done by four hands, a woman and a man, another nod from the opening ceremony to modern times.