July 13, 2024 – 12:21 PM
Amelie Oudea-Castera, France's sports minister, ventured into the Seine on Saturday, two weeks before the start of the Paris Olympics, to prove that the water is clean enough, the newspaper wrote. file to France BFM TV channel Based on his report.
In the Paris region, Olympic organizers spent €1.4 billion to install cleaning and drainage systems on the Seine, so they could hold open-water swimming events on the river, along the city’s main landmarks. They took this to heart because the river was also swimmable during the 1900 Paris Olympics. But since 1923 it has not been.
The sports minister is not the only politician who wants to use radical measures to prove that after more than a hundred years, the heavily polluted part of the river that bisects Paris has been cleaned up. At the end of June, the mayor of Paris also announced that they would bathe in the Seine in the week of July 15, more than a week before the Olympic Games. With this act, Anne Hidalgo wants to silence the voices that say that the Olympic figures cannot be kept in the waters of the river due to their pollution. According to the plans, President Emmanuel Macron will join the mayor, and a mass gathering in the Seine in Paris was announced after the news of Macron and Hidalgo’s swim.
Incidentally, Amelie Oudea-Castera's descent into the river was not elegant either, because instead of walking in it, she slipped and then floated on the water for a short time before starting to swim.
Official reports are less optimistic: at the end of June, the Paris authorities announced that the Seine's waters were still not clean enough for open-water swimming competitions. A few weeks ago, there was also a minor scandal because, based on measurements by the water authority, the proportion of E. Coli bacteria from human faeces was four times the permissible value in the water.
The Paris 2024 Olympics will take place from July 26 to August 11, and among other things, triathlon and marathon swimming competitions will be held in the Seine.
