After months of anticipation, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo yesterday took a dip in the long-polluted Seine River, fulfilling a promise to show it was clean enough to host open swimming competitions during the Olympic Games, with the opening ceremony on the river nine days away.
Clad in a wetsuit and goggles, Hidalgo plunged into the river near the imposing-looking Hotel de Ville, her office, and the Notre Dame Cathedral. Paris 2024 Olympic Organizing Committee president Tony Estanguet and the top government official for the Paris region, Marc Guillaume, joined her, along with swimmers from local swimming clubs.
“The Seine is exquisite,” Hidalgo said from the water.
Photo: AFP
“The water is very, very good. A little cool, but not so bad,” she said after emerging.
The event is part of a broader effort to showcase the river’s improved cleanliness ahead of the Summer Games, which start on Friday next week with a lavish open-air ceremony that includes an athletes’ parade on boats on the Seine.
Daily water quality tests early last month indicated unsafe levels of Escherichia coli bacteria, followed by recent improvements.
Swimming in the Seine has been banned for more than a century.
Since 2015, organizers have invested US$1.5 billion to prepare the Seine for the Olympics and to ensure Parisians have a cleaner river after the Games.
The plan included constructing a giant underground water storage basin in central Paris, renovating sewer infrastructure, and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.
Originally planned for last month, Hidalgo’s swim was postponed due to snap parliamentary elections in France.
On the initial date, the hashtag “jechiedanslaSeine” (“I’m pooping in the Seine”) trended on social media as some threatened to protest the Olympics by defecating upstream.
That did not deter Hidalgo, who carefully entered the river yesterday using a ladder on an artificial pond, set up for the event. Seven security boats were deployed for the occasion.
They swam down the river for about 100m. The upper banks were crowded with curious spectators.
“I wouldn’t have missed that for anything in the world,” said Lucie Coquereau, who woke up early to get the best view of Hidalgo’s up from the Pont de Sully bridge that oversees the swimming site.
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