After the handover ceremony of the Olympic Flame at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, which will take place this Friday, April 26, Béatrice Hess and Gabriella Papadakis will be the final torchbearers of the Olympic flame in Greece. They will be alongside Greek athletes: Antigoni Ntrismpioti, walking specialist and double European champion in the 20 km and 35 km in Munich in 2022 and Ioannis Fountoulis, captain of the Greek waterpolo team and silver medalist in Tokyo 2020. The latter will light the cauldron and close the 11 days of Relay in Greece.
Gabriella Papadakis was chosen for her track record in figure skating with Guillaume Cizeron (silver in Pyeongchang in 2018, and gold in Beijing in 2022) and for the cultural link that she embodies between France and Greece. Béatrice Hess, for her part, is one of the most illustrious French Paralympic swimmers. Between 1984 and 2004, she accumulated 26 medals, including five at the Athens Games in 2004. She is still today the most successful French athlete in the history of the Paralympic Games.
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The Olympic Flame will be entrusted to Paris 2024 tomorrow during the traditional handover ceremony organized by the Hellenic Olympic Committee. La Flame will then board the Belem, the famous three-masted ship of which Caisse d'Epargne is the main sponsor, from the port of Piraeus towards Marseille!