Paris Mayor swims in the Seine.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has taken a plunge in the River Seine to demonstrate that it is clean and prepared for the upcoming 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will start later this month.

France has allocated €1.4bn to clean up the river, addressing ongoing concerns about sewage system overflows that introduce waste waters and bacteria into the Seine. President Emmanuel Macron has also promised to swim in the river eventually.

“We will allow Olympic events to take place, and allow people to swim after, but in cleaning the river we also avoid trashing the ocean,” Hidalgo told Bloomberg following her swim on Wednesday (17 July 2024). “We have to adapt our cities to climate change and rivers are part of it.”

The cleanup of the river — essentially unswimmable for the past century — has become a major project for France. There have been objections and protest regarding the river’s condition, with many raising concerns that the cleanup would be completed in time.

During the Paris Olympics, 55 male and 55 female athletes will complete a 1.5km swim in the river as part of the triathlon. A week later, the marathon swimmers will swim from the same location.

Numerous swimming clubs around Paris have been enthused by Hidalgo’s stunt, Bloomberg reports. Many were keenly watching Hidalgo, and a queue swiftly formed for a chance to enter the water.

The river’s cleanliness is impacted by weather, as rainy conditions can cause the city’s sewage system to overflow. The forecast for July, so far, is not causing major concerns for authorities.

However, a larger issue is now related to the river’s flow, which is currently extremely high — almost three times higher than average for this time of year. If the levels do not lower in time for the marathon swim, a new location for the event has been identified to the east of Paris.

The news of the Seine’s renaissance comes in stark contrast to the state of the waterways in neighbouring Britain. Last month, a spat broke out after high levels of E-coli were found in the River Thames along the stretch used for the Henley Royal Regatta. Thames Water denied wrong-doing in the pollution of River Thames, saying the method of testing was not transparent.

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