Seine fit for swimming most of past 12 days, Paris official says ahead of Olympics

PARIS – The Seine has been clean enough to swim for most of the past 12 days, Paris City Hall said on July 12, just weeks ahead of the Olympic Games.

The quality of the water met the required standard for “11 days or 10 days” of the past 12, City Hall official Pierre Rabadan told broadcaster RFI.

Weather permitting, the river will be the star of the opening ceremony on July 26 and will then host triathlon and marathon swimming.

The Paris region has seen unseasonally excessive rain over recent weeks, which has raised the Seine’s pollution levels as untreated sewage is washed into the river.

“We hope the weather will get a little better, but we are not worried about the possibility of holding the competitions. They will take place,” said Rabadan, who added that there may have to be “modifications”, without giving details.

Weather in Paris is forecast to be mostly dry over the final 14 days before the start of the Games.

On July 4, City Hall had already reported that E. coli bacteria levels at the Olympic swimming spot in central Paris had fallen to within acceptable limits for four days.

But the previous week, levels of E. coli – a bacteria indicating the presence of faecal matter – had been above the upper limits used by sports federations every day at the Alexandre III bridge location, which is set to be the jumping-off point for swimming.

At one point, E. coli levels were 10 times the upper limit of 1,000 colony-forming units per 100 millilitres (cfu/ml), with heavy rain over the previous two months leading to fears for the Olympic events.

The Seine is set to be used for the swimming leg of the triathlon on July 30-31 and Aug 5, as well as the open-water swimming event on Aug 8-9.

French authorities have spent €1.4 billion (S$2.05 billion) in the last decade trying to clean up the river by improving the Paris sewerage system, as well as building new water treatment and storage facilities.

Meanwhile, Olympic swimming champion Florent Manaudou and discus thrower Melina Robert-Michon will be France’s flag-bearers at the opening ceremony, it was reported on July 11.

Manaudou, a four-time Olympic medallist including gold in London 2012, and Rio 2016 silver medallist Robert-Michon were chosen by a vote of their fellow athletes, a source close to the Games organisers indicated to newspaper Le Parisien.

Manaudou, 33, and Robert-Michon, 44, will be at the forefront of the French delegation when thousands of athletes – out of a total of around 10,500 competitors – sail down the river on 85 boats.

The ceremony along 6km of the Seine will feature some 3,000 dancers, musicians, actors and circus acts performing along the banks and bridges with an estimated 326,000 spectators.

It is hoped more than a billion viewers will follow the broadcast around the world.

Manaudou was chosen as the first torch-bearer when the Olympic flame arrived onboard a 19th-century ship from Greece to Marseille on May 9 at the start of its 78-day torch relay around France and its overseas territories, including Guadeloupe, New Caledonia and Reunion.

While the opening ceremony is just days away, the Paris Olympics have already sold 8.6 million tickets – a record for any Games.

“It’s a record held by the 1996 Atlanta Games of 8.3 million tickets, and we’ve already passed that total now some time ago,” the 2024 Games organiser Tony Estanguet told AFP on July 11.

“We are at 8.6 million tickets for the Olympics, and over one million for the Paralympics.”

Paris organisers forecast that total rising to 10 million for the July 26-Aug 11 sporting extravaganza, and 3.4 million for the Paralympics staged between Aug 28 and Sept 8.

“The good news is that, in this final stretch, we are making available a number of tickets for lots of sports,” Estanguet said.

“There are lots of really good options at different prices both for the Olympics, Paralympics, and opening and closing ceremonies.

“We are proud to have already beaten the record, but we can still do even better.” AFP