Lilou Ruel, a 21-year-old French freerunner, has revealed she was the only female to play the masked Olympic torchbearer at the opening ceremony in Paris.
The mysterious acrobat was seen jumping their way through the streets of Paris and around the iconic monuments in the French capital during the Olympic opening ceremony in July.
Simon Nogueira, a French free-running champion, revealed after the event that he was one of nine people behind the mask.
Ruel has now come forward as the only woman who was asked to portray the Olympic torchbearer and admits she is ‘frustrated’ that the public were led to believe that it was a man.
‘Even if this character was supposed to remain masked, the fact that everyone thinks that there is only a man or only men underneath, frustrated me a lot… and I wanted to prove them wrong,’ Ruel told Le Parisien.
‘A month and a half before the ceremony, Vincent Zenzel [the choreographer] contacted us, me and eight other guys, a month and a half before the ceremony, in very secret, very confidential conditions.
‘We knew very little about what we were going to do. We learned in July that we would have two or three days of rehearsal, to be ready on July 26.’
Ruel also revealed that she found it difficult to perform he acrobatics whilst holding the Olympic torch, which was 70cm tall and weighed 1.5kg.
‘The atmosphere was just crazy. There was a lot of love and adrenaline, you felt like something big was happening,’ said Ruel.
‘I did two stunts before I got the flame, which is very, very big, so it was almost impossible to do a jump with it.
‘We had this mask, a bit like a fencer… but worse, it was like putting our heads in a colander.
‘In the end, a compromise was found, to keep the guys hooked, so that everything was super safe.’
Ruel also confirmed that she was the masked torchbearer once again during the Olympic Champions Parade in Paris earlier this month.
‘Vincent Zenzel wanted it to be the only girl among the masked torchbearers who would close this beautiful story, so I am very honoured,’ said Ruel.
By revealing her identity, Ruel said that she wanted to ‘show that girls can practice Parkour. And an opportunity to show millions, billions of people, that there is a girl under this mask, it’s important’.
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