The Mayor of Paris has finally taken the plunge! Anne Hidalgo swam in the cleaned-up Seine to prove Olympians probably won't get sick.
Amid the many ways Paris has chosen to show off its eco-friendliness to the gaggle of amateur athletes about to descend on the City of Light, not even the poorly designed housing has raised as many eyebrows as the idea of hosting swimming events in a historic sewage channel. One of many promises made around safety and cleanliness of the River Seine was that the Mayor would swim in it before the events. And so she has…
A vast engineering project, costing some $1.5 billion over the past several years, has stanched the flow of sewage and industrial waste into the Seine. The result is a river that is clean enough for several Olympic events — including the triathlon and two 10-kilometer swimming events — to be held in it and for the opening ceremony involving a flotilla of boats carrying thousands of athletes to take place on it.
As crowds looked on from the riverbanks and bridges, Ms. Hidalgo, 65, in goggles and a black wet suit, swam the crawl rapidly downstream, accompanied by Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris Olympics Committee and a three-time Olympic gold medalist as a slalom canoeist.
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Ms. Hidalgo's initial plan to swim on June 23 was postponed because of the level of the river and the bacteria in it. The swim was put back to June 30. But that idea was blown out of the water by President Emmanuel Macron's surprise move to hold snap parliamentary elections that day — a decision Ms. Hidalgo deplored. "Why ruin this beautiful moment?" she said, alluding to how the vote would encroach on the Olympics.
Mr. Macron, who was invited and had indicated he might swim in the river at some point, was a notable absentee on Wednesday.
NYT
French President Macron has been traditionally wishy-washy about the whole swimming thing, but who knows?
Previously:
• Breakdancing will be an official sport at the Paris 2024 Olympics
• Paris 2024: watching the games, but mostly the toilets
