AssetID: 52919001
Headline: Paris 2024 Olympic And Paralympic Torch Unveiled
Caption: **RAW VIDEO** The organisers of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have unveiled the design for the Torch that will carry the Olympic and Paralympic Flames before lighting the main flame that will mark the start of next year’s event. An iconic object of the Games, the Torch embodies the identity of each edition through its shape, colour and inspirations. Because the Flame will be reaching French people throughout the country and across the seas and the oceans, the Torch had to reflect the image of the Paris 2024 Games. To create it, Paris 2024 chose to work with French designer Mathieu Lehanneur. Lehanneur is a prominent figure in French design, famed for his multidisciplinary approach to fields as disparate as architecture, art, products, and technology. His pieces draw on nature, science, history, and technique. On creating the Torch he says: "Designing the Torch for the Games is a designer’s dream, one that comes around once in a lifetime, like an extraordinary encounter with history. Ritualistic and magical in equal measure, the Torch is a mythical object. “A symbol of cohesion and sharing, it really does play a key role in the Games. It will travel thousands of kilometres, passed from person to person, on land and sea. For Paris 2024, and for the first time in its history, it plays on perfect symmetry, speaking to us more clearly about equality. I wanted it to be extremely pure, iconic, almost elemental. As simple as a hyphen and as fluid as a flame." The Paris 2024 Torch is manufactured by ArcelorMittal, the world’s leading steel company and a Paris 2024 Official Partner. 2,000 torches will be produced by ArcelorMittal, five times fewer than for previous editions of the Games, in order to reduce the impact of production. At Châteauneuf in the Loire département, ArcelorMittal is casting 100% recycled steel from scrap steel. This chosen route produces steel with a reduced carbon footprint. The steel is then rolled at Florange in the Moselle département, on lines that are usually used for the most demanding products in the automotive and food packaging industries. Finally, the ArcelorMittal site at Woippy, in the Moselle département, cuts the steel sheet into blanks ready for shaping. The last two stages of production are carried out by ArcelorMittal’s partners, a famous goldsmith based in Normandy ensures the perfect shaping of the sheets in their factory in Vire (Calvados département) to form the top and bottom parts of the Torch. These sections are then sent to a final industrial group, whose role is to apply a high-tech coating to all the steel parts, giving the Torch its characteristic appearance and colour. Once these operations have been completed, the steel body of the Torch is finished and then ArcelorMittal manages the assembly phase of the body to include the burner and other various parts, particularly those that ensure the Torch’s safety of use: in total, there are ten main components that need to be assembled with meticulous care! Aditya Mittal, CEO of ArcelorMittal, adds: "It is a privilege and a great responsibility for ArcelorMittal to manufacture the Torches – such an iconic symbol of the Olympic and Paralympic Games – for Paris 2024. ArcelorMittal’s teams are mobilising all their expertise to produce high-quality steel with a reduced carbon footprint, enabling us to create a Torch as beautiful as Mathieu Lehanneur imagined it, and as sustainable as we want it to be. I am delighted with this superb achievement and congratulate all the ArcelorMittal teams working on this fantastic project.” The Torch Relay will begin in Marseille on 8 May, crossing all of France's regions until it concludes with the Games' opening ceremony on 26 July 2024.
Keywords: Olympics,paralympics,sport,design,torch,torch relay,feature,news,steel,art
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