Anne Hidalgo swims in the Seine again on the eve of the opening of the Paralympic Games

La maire de Paris s'est baignée de nouveau. – Capture d'écran

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo swam in the Seine again on Tuesday morning, on the eve of the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games and a few days before the first para-triathlon events, held on Sunday.

A video posted on her Instagram account on Tuesday shows her swimming, smiling, under a sunny sky, arm in arm with Marie, in the center of the capital, accompanied by several dozen people in the water.

“Starting next year, swimming in the Seine will become a must-see in the Parisian summer!”, she wrote in a message accompanying her video, reiterating her promise to make the river swimmable for all by the summer of 2025.

Also read: Paris 2024 Olympics: who is this Montpellier resident, an extreme swimmer, who swam in the Seine with Anne Hidalgo ?

The Marie arm is one of three swimming sites in the Seine that should open to the general public in the summer of 2025, along with the Grenelle arm and the Bercy site. Cleaning up the Seine was one of the pillars of Paris' bid and one of the parts of the “Olympic legacy”boasted by the organizers. Anne Hidalgo had bathed for the first time in the Seine on July 17, nine days before the start of the Olympic Games, keeping her promise in front of the world's press, more than a hundred years after swimming in the river was banned.

“A quality that complies with bathing standards at almost all points”

In total, the State and local authorities have invested 1.4 billion euros since 2016 to make swimming possible in the Seine and the Marne, its main tributary. On July 30, however, the men's triathlon event had to be postponed by one day for “health reasons” because the water in the Seine is still too polluted, particularly due to heavy rains.

Like the Olympic athletes before them, Paralympic athletes will be taking to the Seine for the para-triathlon swimming event on September 1 and 2.

Read also: Paris 2024 Olympics: the water quality of the Seine was degraded when Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo went swimming

The race will take place on a 750-meter loop starting from Pont Alexandre III and passing under the Pont des Invalides. A week after the end of the Olympic Games, the organizers noted “a quality that complies with bathing standards at almost all points”, in a joint press release from the Île-de-France prefecture, the Paris city hall and the Games Organizing Committee (Cojo).