Julien De Rosa / AFP
To encourage Parisians to swim in the Seine after the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, Anne Hidalgo will keep her promise to take a dive in the river in July.
JO PARIS 2024 – Everyone in the water with Hidalgo. This is not the slogan of the city of Paris to encourage Parisians to dip a toe in the Seine this summer, but a summary of the quirky invitation launched on Monday, February 5 by the mayor of the capital, less than six months from the Olympic Games.
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, took advantage of an interview with the Ouest France newspaper to reveal more about the promise she made and repeated about her future swim in the Seine, “more than 30 years after Jacques Chirac’s promise.”
And she confirms that she will indeed go into the water before the Olympics. “It will be in July, just down from the Hôtel de Ville at Pont Marie, where swimming will be permanent after the Olympics,” she announced.
Paris mayor confirms that she will make this “beautiful and symbolic dive” before the games, as she had already suggested in January, during her New Year’s wishes. And if Anne Hidalgo had then invited the prefect of the Île-de-France region, Marc Guillaume, for this “historic dive,” this time the invitation seems much wider.
“I invited the prefects and the athletes,” she confirms, before adding that this invitation also concerns French President Emmanuel Macron. “If he wants to come, he will obviously be welcome,” she assured.
Nothing to say about the number of spectators
This proposal confirms the mayor of Paris’ desire to make this symbolic action in the Seine “a great collective swim” before the opening of the games. A way to dispel doubts about the quality of the water of the Parisian river, which is still to host Olympic events, despite the inconclusive or even cancelled tests in recent months due to the deterioration of the water quality of the Seine.
During this interview, the former PS candidate for the 2022 presidential election also announced to Ouest-France that the Olympic village would be inaugurated “by the end of the month,” estimating in passing that it is “an achievement” that the city of Paris is ready for the games, despite “Covid, the war in Ukraine, inflation…”
Regarding the reduction in the number of spectators for the opening ceremony recently announced by the Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, Anne Hidalgo does not seem to see a problem, even if she remains open to the idea of an absence of a limit “in order to have as many people as possible in safe conditions.” However, she says she will comply with the minister’s decisions and even adds that “there is not a cigarette paper between him and me because the important thing is to succeed.”
