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sl8

(16,245 posts)
Sat Aug 24, 2024, 06:58 AM Aug 24

Under sea and over land, the Paris Paralympics flame is beginning an exceptional journey

https://apnews.com/article/paris-olympics-paralympics-torch-relay-flame-9d776abdf8b3a84f464e82073ea60d49

Under sea and over land, the Paris Paralympics flame is beginning an exceptional journey

BY BARBARA SURK
Updated 4:44 AM EDT, August 24, 2024

[...]

The flame will be lit on Saturday in Stoke Mandeville, a village northwest of London widely considered the birthplace of the Paralympic Games. The flame will then travel to France under the English Channel for a four-day relay from Atlantic Ocean shores to Mediterranean beaches, from mountains in the Pyrenees to the Alps.

Its journey will end in Paris on Wednesday during the Paralympics opening ceremony — with the lighting of a unique Olympic cauldron attached to a hot-air balloon that will fly over the French capital every evening during 11 days of competition.

The Flame is Lit
The lighting ceremony of the Paralympic Heritage Flame on Saturday will be held in Buckinghamshire, where the Stoke Mandeville Games were first held in 1948 for a small group of wheelchair athletes who had sustained spinal injuries during World War II.

[...]

Those later grew into the first Paralympic Games, which took place in Rome in 1960. The Heritage Flame ceremony in Stoke Mandeville was first held ahead of the London Paralympics in 2012.

[...]

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AP Paralympics and Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games and https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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