Greek Olympic rowing champion Stefanos Ntouskos will be the first torchbearer in the relay that will travel from Olympia to Paris for next year’s Games, the Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) announced during a press conference in Athens in the presence of the HOC President Spyros Capralos, the ICMG General Secretary Iakovos Filippousis, the Deputy Sports Minister Yannis Vroutsis and the the Ambassador of France to Greece, Laurence Auer.

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Ntouskos, 26, became Greece’s first ever rowing gold medallist when he won the single sculls in Tokyo in 2021. The Olympic flame ceremony will take place on April 16 on the ancient site of Olympia.

Around 600 torchbearers will then carry the Olympic flame on a 5,000 kilometre odyssey around Greece, before reaching the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, site of the first modern Olympics in 1896, on April 26.

The last Greek torchbearers will be players from the men’s water polo team who won silver in Tokyo.

The flame will then leave Piraeus for Marseilles aboard the three-masted sail training ship Belem, a listed historic monument.

It will arrive in France on 8 May 8, just over two and a half months before the start of the Games in Paris on 26 July 26 when it will be used to light the Olympic flame.

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