The mayor of Paris made an original promise before the Olympic Games

Many years ago, Jacques Chirac stated the same thing, but did not fulfill it

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo says she will swim in the Seine in July 2024 ahead of the Summer Olympics in Paris. Such words were heard already in 1990, when Jacques Chirac promised to swim in the city’s river in front of witnesses. He never did it.

The head of the French capital, Anne Hidalgo, plans to swim in the Seine in July 2024, shortly before the Olympic Games, which will be held in Paris from July 26 to August 11, and a year before the opening of three places for swimming in the river in Paris. She stated this during her speech at the town hall.

“In July we will bathe in the Seine,” she promised in a speech, inviting the region’s prefect Marc Guillaume to accompany her on this “historic immersion, more than 30 years after a similar promise by Jacques Chirac.”

Let us recall that in November 2023, Anna Hidalgo spoke at the Paris Council about preparations for the Olympics in the city and scheduled a meeting “before the opening of the Games for a large collective bathing in the Seine.”

Back in 1990, then-Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac promised to “swim in the Seine in front of witnesses” in 1993, but the former president never followed through on his promise.

“Everyone said it was impossible, we did it,” welcomed Anne Hidalgo, who in July 2023 announced the opening for the summer of 2025 of three swimming spots for the general public in the capital, in Bercy, Grenelle and between the island of Saint-Louis and swamp.

Swimming in the Seine was banned in Paris a century ago in 1923 by prefectural decree, and river police are constantly on patrol to prevent dives.

The Olympics are set to mark the resumption of navigation on the Seine, with triathlons and open water swimming starting from the Pont Alexandre III, which connects the Grand Palais with the Invalides.

Previously, when preparing the city for the Olympics, organizers encountered serious problems during these test events: triathlon and open water swimming competitions. They had to be canceled due to pollution related to a “valve failure” in the Paris sewer system. According to the Paris mayor’s office, it was this malfunction that allegedly led to a deterioration in water quality beyond the bacteriological thresholds required for safe diving and swimming in the river.

Since 2016, the French state and local authorities have invested some 1.4 billion euros in making the Seine River and its main tributary, the Marne, swimmable.