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The secrets of the Olympic torch with French designer Mathieu Lehanneur

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2 months ago

July 30, 2024

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Paris’s 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games embrace more than athletic prowess. The event is also a stage for designers, artists, and artisans to showcase their talents. RFI met Matthieu Lehanneur, the designer of the Olympic torch, an iconic object that is one of the great symbols of the Games.

“It is important to realise that between the first and the last torch, we went through a lot of adjustments”, Mathieu Lehanneur told RFI.

To reflect the Games, Lehanneur drew inspiration from three themes of Paris 2024: Equality, Water and Peacefulness.

Water for example, has inspired the wavy, three-dimensional and vibration effects on the torch, which reproduce the ripples and movements of water, in addition to the reflections of light on its surface, according to Paris organisers.

Lehanneur founded his own creation studio in 2001 called La Factory where he designed the Paris 2024 torch.

An Olympic torch weighs 1.5 kilogrammes, is 70 centimetres height and 3.5 centimetres in diameter at both top and bottom.

To reduce the environmental footprint, the Paris 2024 Games produced fewer torches.

There are only 2,000 torches manufactured by Arcelor Mittal: 1,500 Olympic and 500 Paralympic, each of which will be used around ten times during the torch’s journey through France and its overseas territories.

This report is adapted from the 100% Création podcast in French produced by RFI’s Maria Afonso.

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