Paris Olympics 2024: “Dream day”, “the promise was kept”, Anne Hidalgo reacts to her swim in the Seine

Bain olympique et “promesse tenue” pour la maire de Paris dans la Seine. MAXPPP – JOEL SAGET/POOL

Lunettes noires, combinaison courte et grand sourire, la maire de Paris Anne Hidalgo a tenu sa promesse et s’est baignée dans la Seine mercredi en compagnie du président du comité d’organisation (Cojo) Tony Estanguet, une baignade se voulant rassurante à neuf jours des Jeux olympiques.

Bright sunshine, water at 20 °C, bacteria and decreasing flow rate, the planets have aligned for this historic bath of key figures of the Olympic Games, more than a hundred years after the prefectural decree of 1923 which had banned swimming in the river.

JO de #Paris2024 : "On l'a fait (…) L'eau est très très bonne, un petit peu fraîche mais pas tant que ça", Anne Hidalgo, maire de Paris après s'être baignée dans la Seine pic.twitter.com/Y63GyxTuLk

— LCI (@LCI) July 17, 2024

A stone's throw from the Town Hall, where the Marie arm curves between the right bank and the Saint-Louis island, the mayor of the host city, the president of Cojo and the prefect of ;Ile-de-France Marc Guillaume dove into the opaque green water at 10 a.m. before crawling 100 meters. At their side, Pierre Rabadan, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of Sport, the Olympics and the Seine, and not far away, hundreds of spectators gathered on the Sully bridge to observe this unprecedented scene.

⚡️ ALERTE INFO

La promesse est enfin tenue.

Après plusieurs reports, la maire de Paris, Anne Hidalgo s'est baignée dans la Seine, mercredi, vers 10 heures. pic.twitter.com/YASgJqLzVU

— franceinfo (@franceinfo) July 17, 2024

These 100 meters are anything but anecdotal. The Seine is the star of the 2024 Games, its depollution was one of the pillars of the Parisian bid. It’s a "dream day", reacted Ms. Hidalgo after a few minutes of swimming, "the promise was kept". "It's a lot of work, there was a technical dimension, the infrastructures to connect, all the boats… and we did it."

"The Games were an accelerator" and this swim will mark " a deadline" and "will be a major legacy", continued the councilor. "It’is a wonderful feeling indeed", rejoiced Mr. Estanguet echoed, and "a very important message which was sent today to all athletes […] : "that's it, the Seine is swimmable and indeed the competitions triathlon and marathon swimming will be able to take place.

For the president of Cojo, this swim is " also symbolic of the ambition of Paris 2024 to be both spectacular Games but also responsible, useful Games, which will leave a legacy.

The hour of truth

The State and Ile-de-France communities have injected 1.4 billion euros since 2016 to make the Seine and its main tributary, the Marne, swimmable. Modernization of wastewater treatment plants, connection of barges to the sewer system, collection of plastic waste…hellip; The plan also resulted in five major works, including a rainwater and wastewater retention basin near the Austerlitz station, a veritable underground cathedral dug in the very center of Paris.

This basin operated twice during storms: on June 18 (40,000 m3) and the night of July 11 to 12. It avoided 15,000 m3 of spills into the Seine which would have been harmful to water quality for several days, welcomed Samuel Colin-Canivez, responsible for major works on the sanitation network.

The moment of truth is approaching for the organizers: after the opening ceremony on July 26, the triathlon events (July 30 and 31, August 5), marathon swimming (August 8 and 9) and paratriathlon (September 1 and 2) are to be held in the Seine. In the event of intense precipitation, untreated water can be released into the river, a phenomenon that the retention works inaugurated just before the Games are intended to prevent.

Plan B consists of postponing the events for a few days, plan C otherwise aiming to move marathon swimming to Vaires-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne). "We remain more calm than ever […], today it’s a very, very low risk", wanted to reassure Mr. Estanguet on Wednesday.

Latest positive results

These last two weeks, despite the flow of the Seine still being as high (around 400 m3/second on Tuesday), which is detrimental to water quality, town hall and regional prefecture announced generally positive bacteriological results, after several bursts of poor analyzes in June due to rain.

According to the last two samples taken on June 26 and July 4 by the NGO Surfrider on the Olympic course, the content of E.Coli and enterococci, the two bacteria feces measured to authorize or not bathing, complied with the standards of the international federations of the sports concerned.

"The waters are suitable for swimming at the moment", commented Marc Valmassoni, water and health coordinator at Surfrider, regretting however that the content of chemicals is not taken into account by the authorities.

Wednesday, Ms. Hidalgo paid tribute to Jacques Chirac, her illustrious predecessor who, then mayor of the capital in 1990, had promised Parisians that the waters of the Seine would open to them. Three decades later, from the summer of 2025, on the Marie arm, as in Bercy and on the Grenelle arm, all Parisians must be authorized to swim.