After months of anticipation, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has finally dipped in the Seine River, nine days before the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games.
Clad in a wetsuit, Ms Hidalgo plunged into the river near the imposing-looking City Hall, her office, and Notre Dame Cathedral.
Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanguet and the top government official for the Paris region, Marc Guillaume, joined her in the water.
The move is part of a broader effort to showcase the river’s improved cleanliness ahead of the Summer Games which will kick off July 26 and host open-water swimming competitions.
Daily water quality tests in early June indicated unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria, followed by recent improvements.
The swim fulfils a promise Ms Hidalgo made months ago to show the river is clean enough to host open-swimming competitions during the 2024 Games.
“The water is very, very good. A little cool, but not so bad,” Ms Hidalgo said upon emerging.
Since 2015, organisers have invested heavily – £1.1 billion – to prepare the Seine for the Olympics and to ensure Parisians have a cleaner river in the years after the Games.
The plan included constructing a giant underground water storage basin in central Paris, renovating sewer infrastructure, and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.
Despite being a recurring promise among politicians, swimming in the Seine has been banned for over a century. Jacques Chirac, the former French president, made a similar pledge in 1988 when he was Paris mayor, but it was never realised.
Ms Hidalgo follows in the footsteps of French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera, who swam in the Seine on Saturday wearing a full-body suit.
Originally planned for June, Ms 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.
Concerns over the Seine’s flow and pollution levels have persisted, prompting daily water quality tests by the monitoring group Eau de Paris.
The Seine will host several open water swimming events during the Games, including marathon swimming at the Olympic Games and the swimming legs of the Olympic and Paralympic triathlons.
