Dozens of swimmers took a dip in the Seine with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Wednesday in a much-anticipated event to show the cleanliness of the river before the Olympic Games.
“It's pure joy,” Ms Hidalgo, 65, said after her 100-metre front crawl swim wearing goggles and a knee-length wetsuit. “The water feels good – a little cool but not that much. And it's sunny."
Ms Hidalgo became the first Paris mayor to fulfil their promise of swimming in the Seine, as she sought to boost excitement nine days before the Games' opening ceremony, which is due to take place on the river.
In 1988, her predecessor Jacques Chirac famously failed to swim in the river due to high pollution levels.
The city invested €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) on preventing sewage leaks into the waterway but the event had to be postponed several times because of heavy rain. Swimming in the Seine has been banned for over a century. However, the river is set to be used for the swimming leg of the Olympics triathlon on July 30 and 31 and August 5.
Ms Hidalgo was joined by swimming enthusiasts and colleagues, including Antoine Guillou, deputy mayor in charge of waste management and sanitation.
“We are reversing the tide of history,” he told The National as he readied to swim, wearing an old-fashioned striped black and white swimsuit stamped with his office logo – a sewer hole.
“We are giving back to the Seine its role as a river and natural environment that it should never have lost,” said Mr Guillou.
As a legacy of the clean-up effort for the Games, the city has promised that the public will be able to swim in three different sites starting next summer.
Her swim had been scheduled for last month but was delayed because bacteria indicating the presence of faecal matter was found to be as high as 10 times higher than authorised limits in France's second-longest river.
“The Seine is impacted by rainfall and by general weather conditions, not only in Paris but upstream,” said Mr Guillou. “The idea is that when there is rainfall, discharges occur in the Seine because the Seine is historically a safety valve for sanitation networks.”
Some of Paris's underground water network dates back to the 19th century.
The event has sparked jokes and memes on social media, with one viral AI-generated image showing Ms Hidalgo looking like the wrinkled Gollum character from the Lord of the Rings movies after her dip.
Countdown to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games – in pictures
Those who volunteered to swim alongside Ms Hidalgo and her team said they were undeterred by the Seine's pollution.
“It's iconic to swim here. I can come by metro. It's really nice,” said Pierre Malherbe, 49. “I'm not worried about the dirt. It's all diluted in lots of water anyway.”
Speaking before the event, Marc Valmassoni from clean-water campaign group Surfrider, said: “It's been raining all over France. Summer has been very late to arrive and so have the good results.”
“They're not excellent, they're not terrible, they're average. But at this time the water is swimmable.”
Rehearsals for the opening ceremony on the Seine, during which thousands of athletes will set sail down the river, have been postponed repeatedly because of the strength of the currents.
