ATHENS (AFP) – Greek Olympic rowing champion Stefanos Ntouskos will be the first torchbearer in the relay that will travel from Olympia to Paris for next year's Games, the Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) announced on Wednesday.
Ntouskos, 26, became Greece's first ever rowing gold medallist when he won the single sculls in Tokyo in 2021.
The Olympic flame ceremony will take place on April 16 on the ancient site of Olympia.
Around 600 torchbearers will then carry the Olympic flame on a 5,000 kilometre odyssey around Greece, before reaching the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, site of the first modern Olympics in 1896, on April 26.
The last Greek torchbearers will be players from the men's water polo team who won silver in Tokyo.
The flame will then leave Piraeus for Marseilles aboard the three-masted sail training ship Belem, a listed historic monument.
It will arrive in France on 8 May 8, just over two and a half months before the start of the Games in Paris on 26 July 26 when it will be used to light the Olympic flame.
"Greece and France are united by strong ties of cooperation and solidarity. Paris will host superb Olympic Games and show the greatness of the French people," said Spyros Kapralos, president of the HOC.
The first Olympic torch relay took place in 1936 when 3,000 bearers delivered it from Olympia to Berlin.