Beating Mayor Anne Hidalgo to the punch, and before the government jumped, the government member took a dip this Saturday, July 13, in the morning in Paris. A good sign for the state of the river less than two weeks before the start of the Games.
We have seen more majestic dives, but this remains a strong symbolic gesture. The Minister of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, took a dip in the Seine this Saturday, July 13, thirteen days before the start of the Paris Olympics.
As shown in the video broadcast by BFMTV, the former tennis player, clearly more comfortable on clay, misses her entry into the river by slipping on the wet paving stones. Then, dressed in a wetsuit and a cap, she rushes to swim in the water among barges, catfish and other mutant sharks.
The fact remains that this is a great publicity stunt for Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, while the Attal government is in the hot seat and the mayor of the capital, Anne Hidalgo, is due to swim there next week. According to a partner organisation of this event, the meeting is scheduled for the morning of the 17th, on the Marie arm, not far from the Hôtel de Ville.
After massive investment in recent months, authorities announced good results from water testing on Friday, even as rain falls in the host city of the Games. The weather, which has a major impact on water quality, is still not up to par with the summer weather.
Nor one of its corollaries, the flow, which has skyrocketed to around 550 m³/second, compared to 450 the day before, whereas it is normally between 100 and 150 m³/s in summer. On the other hand, the river’s content of fecal bacteria E.Coli, one of the two measured to authorize or not swimming, is increasingly within the limits.
Between July 3 and 9, the sampling point at the Pont Alexandre-III, the Olympic site, only exceeded the standard of 1,000 colony-forming units (CFU)/100 ml on Wednesday 3. The other sampling points showed five days out of seven in the green for Grenelle and Bercy, and six for the Marie arm.
Despite a flow rate “three times higher” than normal in summer, “80% of the analyses” are “compliant with the thresholds of the European directive”, the organizers of the Olympic Games note in this bulletin.
A new plan C
The Paris city hall, through the deputy for the Olympic Games and the Seine Pierre Rabadan, displayed measured confidence after these good results. “I’m not saying that we are very calm given the weather, but we have no concerns about the ability to hold the competitions on time,” said the former rugby player on RFI. “With adjustments, if necessary,” he added, however, a week after the revelation of a plan C consisting of moving the marathon swimming event to Vaires-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne).
Plan B consists of postponing the triathlon events (July 30 and 31, August 5), marathon swimming (August 8 and 9) and paratriathlon (September 1 and 2) by a few days in case of bad weather.
In the event of heavy rainfall, untreated water – a mixture of rain and waste water – can be discharged into the river, a phenomenon that retention structures inaugurated before the Games are intended to prevent.
