Light entertainment as Olympic cauldron fails to ignite

MARSEILLE – The Paris Olympics torch relay suffered its first glitch on May 11 when the cauldron, which is lit at the end of each day, stubbornly refused to ignite.

On the third stage of its 78-day journey at Manosque to the north of Marseille, French swimmer Ophelie-Cyrielle Etienne, a bronze medallist from the 2012 Olympics in London, twice tried without success to ignite the cauldron.

Officials said there was a technical problem even though the cauldron had been lit successfully on the two previous evenings in Marseille and Toulon.

The torch relay, which will reach Paris in time for the opening ceremony on July 26, had taken place without incident on May 11 as it made its way through the rural and mountainous setting of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.

In all, the torch relay will feature around 10,000 runners and traverse 400 towns and cities in France as well as some of its overseas territories including Guadeloupe, New Caledonia and Reunion.

The Olympic flame had arrived in Marseille amid tight security and organisers are continuing to explore ways to keep the Games safe.

State-of-the-art security using artificial intelligence (AI) is being deployed at the Cannes Film Festival in a test for potential applications at the Paris Olympics.

Some 40,000 attendees – and some of the world’s biggest movie stars – fly into the Cote d’Azur for the festival from May 14 to 25.

French local authorities said that they are using 17 experimental cameras equipped with AI technology that are supposed to “identify events or behaviours deemed suspicious” and help detect abandoned packages, weapons and people in distress.

The Cannes town hall has been asking to implement them since 2019 but has only been given permission thanks to changes in surveillance laws introduced for the Summer Games that will run from July 26 to Aug 11, according to Mayor David Lisnard. AFP