Right before a crowd thronging the waterfront and hilltops of the historical port town of Marseille, the Olympic flame arrived on French soil on Wednesday, starting a 79-day relay across the region and its territories that will culminate in Paris with the start out of the Olympic Games on July 26.

Florent Manaudou, France’s Olympic men’s 50 meters freestyle swimming winner in 2012, ushered the flame ashore from a historic three-masted ship, the Belem. It had remaining Greece on April 27, carrying the flame lit in Historical Olympia 11 times right before that.

Just after a department of the French Air Drive, known as the “Acrobatic Patrol,” traced the 5 Olympic rings in the sky, Mr. Manaudou walked the flame along a temporary jetty crafted to resemble track and subject lanes, in entrance of a crowd estimated by neighborhood authorities at a lot more than 225,000. Fireworks erupted in plumes of pink, white and blue smoke — the colours of the French flag — when he reached land.

President Emmanuel Macron looked on with a smile, basking in the joyous environment of a town he enjoys, as Mr. Manaudou handed the torch of to Nantenin Keïta, a French paralympic sprinter. The flame was then provided to Jul, a well-liked Marseille rapper, who lit the Olympic cauldron to wild applause.

“We essential a potent image, a strong symbol that by some means showed the radiant experience of France,” Tony Estanguet, the head of the Paris Olympic Committee, explained to France 2 tv of the town, which was established some 2,600 decades back. “Marseille is a metropolis of sport, enthusiasm, and festivities.”

France has been the concentrate on of recurring Islamist terrorist attacks more than the earlier ten years, and safety was tight on Wednesday, with entry to the port space controlled by a lot more than 6,000 regulation enforcement officers. Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister and a possible presidential applicant, identified as the amount of stability “unprecedented.”

Lucas Poujade, 23, a business enterprise pupil from the Auvergne location of central France, was on vacation near Marseille and resolved to come witness the festivities.

“This is as soon as in a lifetime,” he stated. “I think folks from Marseille are proud and satisfied that the video games are not only hosted in Paris. For those who will not have the opportunity to see 1 of the events, at minimum this is a way to experience included.”

Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille, was jubilant about a spectacle he described as going and whole of surprises. “We can say that Marseille is the Olympic winner of environment,” he claimed.

The relay carrying the flame will begin on Thursday. The torch bearers will incorporate former star gamers for Olympique de Marseille, the local soccer club. Between them will be Didier Drogba and Jean-Pierre Papin. Alexandre Mazzia, a three-star chef with an acclaimed restaurant in Marseille, who will deliver meals for athletes through the Video games, will also bear the torch.

“I am satisfied and proud to be part of this outstanding function,” Mr. Mazzia stated in a short interview. He additional that carrying the flame, for him, represented “values of fraternity, of engagement, of artisanal perform and of French savoir-faire.”

The elaborate relay will entail additional than 10,000 men and women and will involve France’s abroad departments as perfectly as mainland France and Corsica. The torch, on a type of grand tour of the Francophone globe, is likely to Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Réunion, between June 9 and June 17. It will make a first quit in Paris on July 14 and 15, before returning there on July 26 for its set up in the Jardin des Tuileries, amongst the Louvre and the Position de la Concorde.

A person concept guiding the relay is to knit together France, which has not been completely persuaded by the prospect of the Olympics. A survey previous thirty day period by the Ipsos polling institute found that only 53 percent of French persons ended up interested in the Games some 37 % of persons dwelling outside of Paris felt entirely indifferent. While fascination and enthusiasm have been expanding in recent months as the Video games approach, there is absolutely nothing resembling unanimity in France.

An opinion piece revealed on Wednesday in the left-wing day-to-day Libération and composed by several nearby officers in Marseille, which include two deputy mayors, illustrated some of the issues.

“Let’s open up our eyes,” they wrote. “The flame is arriving in a fortress Europe that has forgotten its traditions of greeting and hospitality,” they extra, alluding to makes an attempt by considerably-appropriate get-togethers to clamp down on soaring immigration. The Olympics would hurt the local atmosphere, they mentioned, and in Paris “will accelerate the phenomena of gentrification and expulsion of very poor people.”

Marseille is a regular rival of Paris, in sporting conditions and most other folks. Mr. Macron, a supporter of Olympique de Marseille, has been a normal visitor to the metropolis throughout his 7-year presidency. He has experimented with, with only partial accomplishment, to address the acute social difficulties — prescription drugs, violent criminal offense, severe poverty — that plague parts of the Mediterranean city.

“There are normally uncertainties, there is always a France that uncertainties, and some between us who only want to see problems,” Mr. Macron told journalists following the ceremony. But, he added, “now I believe that we have entered the video games, the games are listed here, the flame is right here!”

Surely on Wednesday the ambiance in Marseille was resolutely upbeat. New music crammed the air and the seems of horns rose from an armada of more than 1,000 boats that came to welcome the Belem underneath blue skies in the quiet, glittering harbor.

The climate smiled on a town that has identified much more than its truthful share of violence and hardship, whilst retaining a fierce delight and the openness of a port town. As a image of the assure of the French Olympics, the preference of Marseille seemed apt.

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.