It was November 1988 when the center-right Jacques Chirac, then the mayor of Paris and then the president of France, soon announced that the residents of the French capital they were able to swim again On the Seine.
Since 1923, diving in its dirty turbid waters was prohibited.
“In five years we will be able to swim there again,” Chirac said, releasing 5,000 pike 65 years after the ban.
“I’ll come with towels and antibiotics,” he was mocked by Brice Lalonde, then Minister of the Environment during Mitterrand’s presidency and later founder of the Ecological Generation party.
Not deterred by this, Chirac repeated the promise he made in 1990 and declared on television in 1993 that he would “bath in the Seine River in front of witnesses.”
He never…
French politician Amelie Oudet-Castera was the first… heroic dive in front of television cameras.
one Olympic Games former professional tennis player, current minister of sports during the presidency of centrist Emmanuel Macron, fell into the river Seine on July 13.
With just 13 days until the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games, Paris’ famous river took center stage
In terms of communication, it didn’t help much that the minister fell into the river wearing a full-body wetsuit.
Four days later, Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris, took the turn for long legs.
He had already postponed swimming the Seine twice because the results of the water sample analysis were too bad.
This is despite the €1.4 billion French authorities have poured into infrastructure to clean up Scania.
Politically… deep dives
Initially, Hidalgo wanted to dive into the Seine in June, but the coliform concentration levels were much higher than the maximum allowed.
One reason was heavy rain, which caused Paris’s outdated sewage system to overflow.
However, thanks to the weather and the new infrastructure being built, the month of July was marked by positive results, allowing French politicians to deal with the Seine.
In particular, French President Macron did not participate in the dives.
He announced that he will swim in the historic river from February.
However, he did not announce a specific date.
And as the Games count down to the opening ceremony, his presidency and France have been plunged into unprecedented political crisis since the impasse stemming from the latest snap parliamentary election, which Macron himself decided to call.
With the country in a caretaker government and a fractured new National Assembly, the last thing its low political profile would need now would be another nasty surprise over hosting the Summer Olympics.
outside Security Issues Seine is considered one of the sensitive points.
It is already planned to hold the triathlon and swimming marathon in the water, which will be the focus of the opening ceremony on July 26.
Whether the condition of the waters will be good enough for the conduct of the sport and the health of the athletes remains a vexing question.
It is clear that alternative solutions are considered in the design.
But considering the already huge costs of the Seine river clean-up program, it would be a communication and political “disruption” to resort to them.
What’s more, swimming in the Seine and Marne rivers will be free again from next summer as part of the legacy of the expensive Olympic Games, if the government’s promise remains.
Ambitious plans, big problems
More than a century ago, at the 1900 Paris Olympics, seven swimming events were held on the River Seine.
Then its waters became clearer.
In fact, swimming in the river has been a popular habit of Parisians since the 17th century.
But at the beginning of the 20th century, most of the rain and sewage of the City of Light poured into the Seine River.
The situation came to a head in 1923 when prohibition came into effect.
A year later, Paris hosted the Olympics again.
This time, swimmers competed in pools.
A lot has changed since then. To the worst…
Today, more than 11 million people live in the capital of the French capital with intensive industrial activity.
Large volumes of sewage were dumped into the river until recently, turning it into a “nursery” for viruses, bacteria and disease-causing protozoa.
Paris’ bid to host the 2024 Olympics has fueled plans to clean up the Seine.
Since 2018, the French state and local authorities have invested heavily in sewage and stormwater treatment infrastructure, as well as connecting thousands of homes and boats to the sewage system.
But heavy rains continue to overwhelm part of Paris’ underground sewage system, which dates back to the 19th century.
The time between sampling and the result of a water quality laboratory analysis can be up to 24 hours.
This means that there can be no clear results in real time on scheduled sports days on the waters of the Seine.
“We hope that the weather will improve, but we are not worried about the organization of the games,” assured Pierre Rabandan, deputy mayor of Paris, responsible for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the municipality.
It is said that everyone is praying for sunny weather.