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Sports Reporter

THE French Embassy in Zimbabwe, in partnership with the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee (ZOC) this morning held 5km run at Mukuvisi Woodlands to mark 500 days before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The run was part of the 24-hour relay around the world. More than 128 French Embassies and diplomatic representations labelised ‘Terre de Jeux 2024’ joined the relay.

Throughout the day and in all continents and time zones based, each embassy organise a 1-hour-long sporting event that kick-off at 9am local time on a sport activity selected locally and passes the relay baton to the next embassy.

The event was attended by the French Ambassador to Zimbabwe Laurent Chevallier, Deputy Head of Mission and Head of Cooperation Anne Bourdy, ZOC president Thabani Gonye, athletes such as Isaac Mpofu, who has already qualified for the Games and Fortunate Chidzivo, who is chasing the qualifying time for marathon in the women’s section among other participants.

Bourdy said the idea was to celebrate with the upcoming event with some of the athletes.

“So we are 500 days ahead of the next Olympic Games in Paris. So the idea here as part of worldwide relay within all the French Embassies we are more than 128 to participate today, we are to do a relay among us in order to kick off the Games in 500 days.

“The idea here in Zimbabwe of course was to partner with Zimbabwe Olympic Committee as we did already in the past to celebrate this upcoming event also with some Zimbabwean athletes.”