Emmanuel Macron seems to believe in the immense gamble that the Paris 2024 teams have taken on by scheduling swimming events in the heart of the capital. Swimming in the Seine? ” And how ! Yes, I will go,” the president assured journalists on Thursday February 29 on the occasion of the inauguration of the Olympic Village for the Paris Games. Without giving a date: “you might be there,” joked Mr. Macron. The mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo also declared at the beginning of January that she would swim in the Seine in July, just before the Olympics.
While taking a dip in the river has been officially prohibited since 1923, the Olympic Games must inaugurate the reunion between swimmers and the Seine. The 10 km swimming marathon, triathlon and paratriathlon events must take place in the river.
With the opening of three swimming areas in Paris (Bercy, Grenelle and between Île Saint-Louis and the Marais) planned for the summer of 2025, swimming in the Seine must become an “important legacy” of the Olympic Games. An old dream already mentioned by Jacques Chirac more than thirty years ago. “In three years, I will go swimming in the Seine in front of witnesses to prove that it has become a clean river,” the former president assured in 1990… without ever honoring his promise.
“An extraordinary investment”
But will the river be clean enough? “For the Seine and the Marne, there has been an extraordinary investment that has been made”, welcomed the president, assuring that they will have “changed face and use”. Since 2016, the State and local authorities in Ile-de-France have launched a multitude of projects to make the Seine and the Marne, its main tributary, swimmable again: around 1.4 billion euros have been mobilized.
However, the organizers of the Paris Games faced serious disappointments this summer during events which were to serve as pre-Olympic tests. Less than a year before the Olympic deadline, two triathlon events (para and mixed) were canceled at the end of August due to the quality of the river water. The cause is the concentration of Escherichia coli bacteria above the level permitted by World Triathlon regulations. A few weeks earlier, the open water swimming events had already had to be canceled due to pollution caused by an unusual summer rain episode.
There was no question of plan B for the Games, assured the president of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Tony Estanguet. All that remains is to convince Parisians to take the plunge.
