Olympic flame : "I am moved to be the link between my two cultures"confides Nikos Aliagas
The start of a long journey. Almost 100 days before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, the Olympic flame will be lit on Tuesday April 16 in Greece, in Olympia, before a vast journey which will take it to Paris on July 26. A ceremony on the ancient Greek site which is inspired by Antiquity and which will be presented by Nikos Aliagas. The Franco-Greek television and radio host explains to us his pride in being present during this ceremony and the symbol that these Olympics represent in times of war.
franceinfo: What emotions are going through you this Tuesday morning? ?
Nikos Aliagas: It makes me think of myself when I was a kid, in the streets of Paris, editing a small student newspaper where I talked about the Olympic flame at the end of the 1980s. It was called the Franco-Hellenic Review. And I remember going to the library to look for archive footage of the lighting of the flame. At the time, the Internet was just emerging, so we tried to get material. Today, being in this material which is alive, which has spanned centuries, and being a bit of a link between my two cultures, in quotes, modestly, that delights me. It moves me deeply because it goes beyond the scope of my work. Today, I do not work, I put myself at the disposal of France, the country in which I was born, and of Greece which is a country of my parents, a country also that I carry within me.
You return to this Olympia site, 20 years after the Athens Games, what does this place represent for you?
First, it is the place where the Olympic idea was born. I came here with my parents when I was a kid, to discover the museum, the site, and the vibrations. And then in 2004, I went back there again. But I presented the ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Athens. So coming back here at 55 years old is not at all the same way of perceiving things. There is a maturity which means that there is emotion and at the same time, I realize that if there had not been this Olympic idea which at the time seemed as utopian as the others, it would that is to say we stop the wars, we stop everything and we come to an agreement. We come from all the cities of Greece, we also come from abroad and we will surpass ourselves like gentlemen. We are going to seek in courtesy, in dignity and honor, the best we have to see where we are. What is very moving is that here we gained nothing, except that we gained immortality, the respect of the gods and we could have our statue next to that of Zeus or Apollo . That says something today and I believe that this is the source of Olympism, which also inspired Coubertin.
