Paris 2024 Olympics: were knives available for purchase on the Marseille Olympic site?

The image, particularly surprising, circulated on social networks Wednesday evening on the sidelines of the festivities around the arrival of the Olympic flame in the Old Port of Marseille aboard the three-masted Belem. We can see pocket knives signed Paris 2024 sold in a store, within the very areas where 150,000 people were gathered.

Sold at 30 euros each, the small official pocket knives consist of a stainless steel blade and a wooden handle, according to the product description. However, the area was particularly secure with 6,000 law enforcement agents present in the Marseille city. On site, we observed eleven excavation points distributed around the Old Port. We were systematically checked at each entrance, each time with one person scanning and another searching. It was therefore apparently impossible to pass anything since it was at the level of controls carried out at airports.

When questioned, the Paris 2024 communications department confirmed that “independent businesses” did indeed sell official products, including these white blades. However, she assures that “none of the five official stores” present in the Old Port have sold knives, and “that none of the official Relais stores will sell them.”

79 days before the opening of the Paris Olympics, on July 26, for the third Parisian Olympics in history, after 1900 and 1924, the Olympic flame arrived in France, after 12 days of travel from its native homeland, in Greece. This Thursday morning, the flame began its relay in Marseille through 400 cities in France.