Anne Hidalgo swam in the cleaned-up waters of the capital’s river, fulfilling a promise that has become a symbol of the Olympic Games that start this month.
Nine days before the starter pistol is fired on her city’s Olympics Games, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has braved the murky waters of the Seine to show that the river is clean enough to host scheduled outdoor swimming events.
“The swim was amazing, the water was great, a bit cold but not too much,” Hidalgo told journalists from the water. “The Seine is exquisite... after the Games we will have a swimming pool in the river for all the people, for the Parisian people and for the tourists also.” “I remember at the very beginning in 2015 when we began our campaign for the Games, the international triathlon federation said why not a triathlon in the Seine? Will athletes be able to swim in the Seine? Today we can say they can,” Hidalgo said.Hidalgo, who said the swim was “a dream”, plunged into the river near City Hall and the Notre Dame Cathedral alongside Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanguet, with swimmers from local swimming clubs and engineers who worked on the project.
Competitors in the open-water swimming events and triathlon will set off at Pont Alexandre III, a marvel of engineering near the foot of the Champs-Elysees, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The water will be tested regularly at several points before each event and authorities are certain it will be clean with 75 per cent of identified bacterial pollution eliminated.
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