The Olympic flame isn’t a flame at all

Paris: The Olympic flame isn’t a flame.

Well, it’s sort of a flame. But it’s not made of fire. Even if it looks a lot like fire.

Wait. Let me backtrack. Every Olympic host city has a few basic tasks that force it to straddle the line between acknowledging the tradition of the Games while showing that it is keeping up with the times. Essentially, each new host needs to play the hits but still surprise and delight the listeners. That’s how you end up, for example, with an opening ceremony featuring a nearly nude man on a barge, covered in blue paint and glitter.

And that’s how you get an Olympic flame that’s not a flame at all. A flame that is actually “a cloud of mist and beams of light,” according to Paris 2024 organizers. That flame (or is it “flame”?) rests in an enormous cauldron, comprises 40 LED spotlights and 200 misting nozzles and is tethered to what looks like a gigantic hot-air balloon that will rise into the air every night of the Games.

I visited that “flame” on Sunday in the Tuileries Garden, in central Paris, where it exerted a certain planetary gravity on its surroundings. Tourists gathered and held their cameras over their heads. Cyclists hopped off to take photos. Police officers took turns snapping selfies with it.

It flickers like a fire, though as I walked alongside it, I felt a spray of cool mist on my legs, a reminder of the illusion at work. The entire structure — metallic, otherworldly and vaguely futuristic — creates an appealing contrast with the serene setting and the 19th century sculptures that ring the garden.

Tony Estanguet, the president of Paris 2024, said in a statement the aim of this new flame was to capture the spirit of “daring, creativity, innovation — and sometimes madness! — of France.”

As many as 10,000 visitors a day can request free access to view the “flame” and its orb up close, though preregistration is required online and tickets for certain slots have been hard to come by. At sundown each day, the whole contraption ascends roughly 200 feet into the sky.

Rony Gabali and his son, Nelson, 10, felt compelled to swing by Sunday after seeing it on television. Gabali thought it would be a “wonderful souvenir” for his son to experience the object up close.

“It’s beautiful,” Nelson said, smiling and trying out some English before adding in French, “It reminds me of a montgolfière.”

That’s the goal. The setup was conceived by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur as a tribute to the Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne, who in 1783 invented the first hot-air balloon that carried people. The technology for this version was provided by EDF, a government-owned electric utility company.

The modern homage was another example of how Paris is using the beauty of its city as a stage for the Games. And it may be here to stay.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on French Bleu radio Monday morning that she hoped the cauldron would become a permanent legacy of the Olympic Games, along with the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower and the statues of women that emerged from the Seine during the opening ceremony.

She called the cauldron “extraordinary” and its location above the Tuileries Garden “magnificent.”

Yet the object, alluring as it is, raises another question: What happened to the flame, the actual fire, that had been lit and transported from Greece and ferried around France for weeks?

The press office for the Paris Games wrote in an email that the electric flame should be considered the “true Olympic flame.”

“For the Olympic movement, only the symbol of a flame that does not go out before the end of the Games matters,” it said, adding, “Given the specificity of our cauldron and the technologies involved, we will still keep a lit lantern in the immediate vicinity of the cauldron for the public to admire.”

Sure enough, in one corner of the garden, I saw something curious: a little glass box set atop a white stand, like a museum display. “Lit in Olympia, from the sun’s rays,” a sign affixed to it read. Inside was a flame — a tiny, real flame.