the cauldrons that will receive the flame during the baton look anything but a cauldron

THOMAS SAMSON/AFP

Designer Mathieu Lehanneur, creator of the cauldrons and the Olympic torch for the Paris 2024 Games.

JO DE PARIS – A simple metal ring that allows the fire to reflect on a corrugated surface. The Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games revealed on Monday 6 May the design of the cauldrons that will welcome the Olympic flame on the evenings it crosses France.

The flame of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, lit on 16 April in Olympia, Greece, will arrive on 8 May in Marseille, aboard the wooden-masted Belem. From there she will begin a journey through France, crossing 450 cities on the arm of 11,000 flame bearers, to reach Paris on July 26.

But for the night and during the celebration, the precious flame will be placed in one “boiler”. This “will mark the spirits”hopes Delphine Moulin, director of the Paris 2024 celebrations, “since we will have the opportunity to light it 65 times in 65 celebration locations”.

The waves are to represent the Seine

The cauldron, designed like the Olympic torch by designer Mathieu Lehanneur, takes the form of a stainless steel ring with a diameter of 1.35 m – and not a tank – surmounting a base covered with a corrugated hydroformed plate. The whole thing weighs 95 kg, specifies made.

“It is an extremely simple object”described Mathieu Lehanneur during a presentation to the press, “there’s a ring that seems to be just suspended, just floating above a base where we find this water game” present on the Olympic torch, aquatic ripples that “Tell us clearly about the Seine”as “Opening Ceremony Teaser”.

The object, whose pale color was designed in “mix a gold, silver and bronze medal”, “gets its full meaning when it burns”estimates its designer, thanks “reflections between this sheet of metal in liquid relief and the flame that seems to float above”.

ArcelorMittal for production

Globally, “The idea of ​​the cauldron was to make it a symbol of brotherhood”since “this is the object we will gather around every night during the relay”, adds Mathieu Lehanneur. The ring constituted “the clearest, most immediate symbol to commemorate this brotherhood”he estimated.

A total of 20 pots will be produced by ArcelorMittal to meet the needs of the Olympic and Paralympic relay. Technically, the inside of the ring is pierced with 260 microholes of one and a half millimeters from which the gas will come out to sustain the combustion, coming through pipes hidden in the feet of the object.

The world’s second largest steel producer, which also produces the Olympic torches and the Olympic rings for the Eiffel Tower, did not want to disclose the contract amount for these three objects.

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