'It's great to have a jockey carry the Olympic flame' - Chantilly plays host to torch relay days before opening ceremony

Frankie Dettori in 2012. Yutaka Take in 2021. The list of jockeys to have carried the Olympic torch grew from two to three at Chantilly racecourse on Thursday when Sophie Chuette joined an exceptional club of horseracing people who have participated in this most iconic element of the build-up to the Games. 

Just eight days before the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics takes place on the River Seine, Chantilly played host to the latest stage of the torch relay, which has traversed France and its overseas territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific since first arriving on the host country's soil in Marseille on May 8. 

Few backdrops to its progress can have matched the Grandes Ecuries and the Chateau de Chantilly, as 88-year-old Yves Bienaime carried the flame up little more than a furlong of the home straight aboard his snow-white Lusitanian, Lotus, who was flanked by mounted gendarmes and all the while maintained the exaggerated gait of the Spanish walk.