Paris Paralympics flame is lit before journey from English village, under sea and over land

Four days before the start of the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games, the Paralympic flame was lit on Saturday near a hospital in the English village of Stoke Mandeville, where the idea for the competion was conceived. A group of British athletes will embark on the underwater journey through the Channel Tunnel on Sunday, taking it halfway, before handing it over to 24 French torchbearers, who will carry it to the French coastal city of Calais.

Two weeks after French star swimmer Léon Marchand extinguished the Olympic flame to close the Paris Olympics, the spotlight is now on its Paralympic counterpart.

British Paralympians Helene Raynsford and Gregor Ewan on Saturday lit the flame in Stoke Mandeville, a village northwest of London widely considered the birthplace of the Paralympic Games.

The flame will now 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.

We are "ready to make it unique and memorable for France and the whole world,” Estanguet said.

(AP)

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