Olympic Flame Arrives In France Amid Tight Security In Test Run For Paris Opening Ceremony
deadline.comThe Olympic flame touched down in France on Wednesday with some 150,000 people gathering in the southern city of Marseille’s historic port area to watch its transfer onto French soil after a 12-day journey from Greece in a hundred-year-old three-masted sailing ship.
The ceremony is being seen as a test run for the opening ceremony on July 26 of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games, in terms of crowd control and security.
Around 5,500 security staff were mobilized for the event, 2,400 of them police officers, with a security perimeter set around the spectator area and more than 500 plain-clothed police officers mingling with the crowds.
The flame’s arrival in France sparked a day of debate in the local media on whether the country and Paris in particular would be ready for the 2024 games running from July 26 to August 11, both physically and in spirit.
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