PARIS 2024. Anne Hidalgo will swim in the Seine in July, just before the Olympic Games

Lors de ses vœux pour 2024, Anne Hidalgo a indiqué qu'elle se baignera dans la Seine en juillet. MAXPPP – Vincent Isore

The mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo will swim in the Seine in July, just before the Olympic Games (July 26 – August 11) and a year before the opening of three swimming areas in the river in Paris, she said. -she announced Wednesday during her wishes for 2024.

In July, "we will swim in the Seine", she said during her greetings at the Town Hall, inviting the regional prefect Marc Guillaume to accompany him in this "historical dive", "more than 30 years after Jacques Chirac's promise".

In 1990, Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, promised to "bathe in the Seine in front of witnesses" in 1993, but the ex-president never kept his commitment.

1. Vœux d’Anne #Hidalgo
L’année 2024 sera forcément extraordinaire, qui verra revenir les #JOP à @Paris. Des #JOP qui contribuent à la transformation écologique de la ville pour les Parisiens : pietonisation, accessibilité, végétalisation, baignade dans la #Seine pic.twitter.com/3UiXNBq5lp

— Colombe Brossel (@cbrossel) January 10, 2024

"Everyone said it was impossible, we did it", welcomed Anne Hidalgo, who had announced, in July 2023, the opening for the summer of 2025 of three swimming sites for the general public in the capital, at Bercy, Grenelle and between Île Saint-Louis and the Marais.

The Olympic Games will mark the reunion of swimming with the Seine

The announcement was made of this last site, on the occasion of a dive by his deputies for town planning Emmanuel Grégoire and for sport Pierre Rabadan. But the socialist mayor had not taken the plunge.

Swimming in the Seine, which was already practiced under the Ancien Régime, was banned in Paris a century ago (1923) by a prefectural decree, and a river brigade constantly patrols to prevent diving.

The Olympic Games must inaugurate the reunion of swimming with the Seine: the triathlon and open water swimming events will start from the Alexandre-III bridge which connects the Grand Palais to the Invalides.

Anne Hidalgo will swim in the Seine in July 2024. MAXPPP – Luc Nobout

But the organizers of the Paris Olympics faced serious disappointments last summer during these test events. Before the cancellation of the two triathlon events (para and mixed), it was the open water swimming events that had to be canceled due to pollution caused by an unusual summer rain episode.

Since 2016, the State and local authorities in Ile-de-France have invested around 1.4 billion euros to make the Seine and the Marne, its main tributary, swimmable.< /p>