Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo Dives into the Seine to Prove Water Cleanliness Ahead of Olympics

The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, dove into the Seine River on Wednesday morning as promised. She was trying to prove that the water is clean enough to host the outdoor swimming competitions during the Olympic Games, which start in the French capital in 9 days.

Before that, on Saturday, French Sports Minister Amélie Oudea-Castaire also swam in the river in a wetsuit to support the organisers before the start of the Olympics on 26 July. The 46-year-old athlete was accompanied by paratriathlete Alexis Hankwant, who will carry the French flag at the Paralympic opening ceremony on 28 August.

The question of whether the river will be clean enough to host official swimming events has kept Parisian officials on their toes for months.

The Summer Olympics will begin on 26 July in Paris with a lavish open-air ceremony that includes a parade of athletes on boats along the Seine.

Several open water swimming events will take place in the Seine during the Games: the Olympic marathon swimming and the swimming stages of the Olympic and Paralympic triathlons.

Rehearsals for the opening ceremony on the banks of the Seine, during which thousands of athletes are expected to swim the river, have had to be postponed several times due to the strength of the current.

French politicians have been promising to clean up the Seine for decades. Jacques Chirac, the former French president, made a similar promise in 1988 when he was mayor of Paris - but swimming in the river has been banned for more than a century.

So far, the French authorities have invested heavily in new water treatment and storage facilities in and around Paris, and have connected thousands of homes and boats through canals without sewage connections to the sewer system.

Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron personally assured that the water in the Seine River in Paris would be clean enough to host swimming competitions in May at the 2024 Olympic Games.