WATCH: Spurs legend Tony Parker takes his turn in Olympic torch relay

MARSEILLE – Joyful crowds gathered along the streets of France’s southern port of Marseille on Thursday to see torchbearers carrying the Olympic flame through the city’s most emblematic sites, a day after it arrived on a majestic three-mast ship for a welcoming ceremony.

Frenchman and San Antonio Spurs legend Tony Parker took his turn in the relay, saying it was “a great honor.”

Watch Parker carry the torch in the video player above.

On a nearby crowded beach, swimmers and sunbathers cheered the torchbearers as the flame passed.

Former soccer player Basile Boli, who played with the Marseille team in the 1990s, kicked off Thursday’s relay from the Notre Dame de la Garde basilica.

It was the first leg of an 11-week journey across the country for the torch, which will be carried by about 10,000 bearers as it passes through more than 450 towns until the Games’ opening ceremony in Paris on July 26.

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