A stone’s throw from the Hôtel de Ville, where the Marie branch describes a curve between the right bank and the Île Saint-Louis, the mayor of the host city, the president of the Cojo and the prefect of Ile-de-France, Marc Guillaume, plunged into the opaque green water at 10:00 a.m.
She, with a ponytail and a short black wetsuit, and Tony Estanguet, in shorts, crawled a hundred meters, a symbolic act more than a hundred years following the prefectural decree which had banned swimming in the river in 1923.
Alongside them, the prefect of Ile-de-France Marc Guillaume, Pierre Rabadan, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of Sport, the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Seine, and hundreds of spectators gathered on the Pont Sully to observe the scene.
Although from the outside this race for image may seem funny, the subject is crucial for the organisers of the Olympic Games, who have made the river the star of these Games, and its decontamination one of the pillars of their candidacy.
It’s a “dream day,” reacted Ms. Hidalgo following swimming for a few minutes, “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 symbolic swim will mark “a deadline” and “will be a major legacy”, continued the mayor.
Marc Guillaume also expressed his “satisfaction”: “We did it and we are ready for Tony Estanguet to organize the Olympic Games.”
The moment of truth
The State and local authorities of the Paris region have injected 1.4 billion euros since 2016 to make the Seine and its main tributary, the Marne, swimmable.
Modernization of sewage treatment plants, connection of barges to the sewer system, collection of plastic waste… The plan also gave rise to five major works, including a rainwater and wastewater retention basin near the Gare d’Austerlitz, a veritable underground cathedral dug in the heart of Paris.
These works “will make it possible to reduce the period during which it is impossible to hold the tests in the Seine to less than two days following the last rain,” the prefecture stated in March.
The moment of truth is approaching for the organizers: following the opening ceremony, the triathlon (July 30 and 31, August 5), marathon swimming (August 8 and 9) and paratriathlon (September 1 and 2) events must be held in the Seine.
However, in August 2023, rehearsals for these disciplines turned into a nightmare for the organizers, who were forced to cancel several days of test events due to water that was unsuitable for swimming.
In the event of heavy rainfall, untreated water may be discharged into the river, a phenomenon that the retention structures inaugurated just before the Games are intended to prevent.
Plan B consists of postponing the events by a few days, while Plan C aims to move the marathon swimming to Vaires-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne).
Latest positive results
Over the last two weeks, despite the Seine’s flow rate remaining high (around 400 m3/second on Tuesday), which is detrimental to water quality, the town hall and regional prefecture have announced generally positive bacteriological results, following several rounds of poor analyses in June due to the 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 fecal bacteria measured to authorize or not swimming, was in accordance with the standards of the international federations of the sports concerned.
“The water is currently safe for swimming,” Marc Valmassoni, water and health coordinator at Surfrider, told AFP, although he regretted that the chemical content was not taken into account by the authorities.
After her swim on Wednesday, Anne Hidalgo paid tribute to Jacques Chirac, her illustrious predecessor, who, as mayor of the capital in 1990, promised Parisians that the waters of the Seine would be opened to them.
