Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a long-awaited dip in the River Seine on Wednesday morning in a bid to prove the water is clean enough to host the outdoor swimming events at the Olympics later this month.
Nine days before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of the French capital, braved the murky waters of the Seine on Wednesday morning to show that the river is clean enough to host the Games’ outdoor swimming events.
Sporting a wetsuit and goggles, Hidalgo swam in the famed waterway as hundreds of onlookers watched from the riverbanks and fulfilled a promise she made back in January.
She broached the river feet first – two bikes and a scooter had been fished out of the river that morning – and she didn't dive to avoid injuring herself.
She was joined by Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris 2024 Games.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who had promised to join the Seine bathers, was a notable absentee, with the beleaguered head of state consumed by a political crisis caused by his decision to call snap parliamentary elections last month.
“The Seine is exquisite,” said Hidalgo from the water. After emerging, she continued to rave, “The water is very, very good. A little cool, but not so bad.'' She also said today was “a dream” and a “testimony that we have achieved a lot of work", referencing the city’s “swimming plan” that was launched in 2015.
The pair swam along the stretch of the river that passes by City Hall and the Notre Dame Cathedral in a bid to showcase the river’s improved cleanliness.
"On the eve of the Games, when the Seine will play a key role, this event represents the demonstration of the efforts made by the city and the state to improve the quality of the Seine's waters and the ecological state of the river," Hidalgo's office said on Tuesday.
Despite investing some $1.4 billion euros in preparing the Seine for the Olympics – largely to prevent sewage leaks into the river – the Seine had until recently repeatedly failed daily water quality tests. Concerns over the Seine’s flow and pollution levels have also persisted.
Hidalgo had originally planned to swim in June, but had to delay her dip because bacteria indicating the presence of faecal matter were found to be sometimes 10 times higher than authorised limits.
On the initial date, the hashtag ”jechiedanslaSeine” (“I’m pooping in the Seine”) trended on social media as some threatened to protest against the Olympics – and Hidalgo – by defecating upstream.
But since the beginning of July, as heavy rains finally gave way to sunnier weather, samples have shown the river to be ready for the open-water swimming and triathlon – and for 65-year-old Hidalgo.
"It's been raining all over France. Summer has been very late to arrive and so have the good results," said Marc Valmassoni from clean-water campaign group Surfrider which has been conducting weekly tests on the Seine since last year.
"They're not excellent, they're not terrible, they're average. But at this time the water is swimmable."
Hidalgo followed in the footsteps of French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who swam in the Seine on Saturday in a wetsuit.
Key legacy achievements of the Games
The Summer Games will kick off on July 26 with a lavish open-air ceremony that includes an athletes’ parade on boats on the Seine.
The Seine will host several open water swimming events during the Games, including marathon swimming at the Olympic Games and the swimming legs of the Olympic and Paralympic triathlons.
Politicians have vowed to clean up the Seine for decades – Jacques Chirac, the former French president, made a similar pledge in 1988 when he was Paris mayor – but swimming in the river has been banned for more than a century.
Cleaning up the waterway has been promoted as one of the key legacy achievements of Paris 2024, with Hidalgo intending to create three public bathing areas for the city's residents next year.
"We're not doing it for three days of competition in the Seine," chief organiser Estanguet told AFP during an interview last week. "We're going it above all for environmental reasons ... I'm proud that we've served as an accelerator."
French authorities have invested in new water treatment and storage facilities in and around Paris, as well as ensuring that thousands of homes and canal boats without waste water connections are linked up to the sewerage system.
Major storms still overwhelm the Paris underground waste-water network, however, some of which dates back to the 19th century.
The heavy rains of May and June have led to regular discharges of untreated effluent into the Seine and have also increased the flow and height of the river, causing different problems for Paris 2024 organisers.
Rehearsals for the Seine-based opening ceremony, during which thousands of athletes are set to sail down the river, have had to be repeatedly postponed because of the strength of the currents.
The Seine's flow is currently around 400 m3/second, many times above the usual level for this time of year of around 100-150 m3/s.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)
