– Anne Hidalgo’s wetsuit at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne
The swimming suit that the mayor of Paris used before the Paris Olympics this summer is entering posterity.
Published today at 10:03 a.m.
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Anne Hidalgo had promised that she would swim in the Seine before the Olympics. And she did. In 1990, the wish of Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, to return the Seine to Parisians, finally came true and the Olympic Museum of Lausanne intends not to be forgotten in the operation.
“I am very honored to hand over, at the request of the Olympic Museum, the suit that I wore during my first swim in the Seine. This separate memory which marks the culmination of so many years of work, I am proud that it can symbolically integrate the collections of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne,” communicated Anne Hidalgo. “From the opening ceremony to the triathlon events, the Seine was at the heart of the Paris 2024 Games. And this is not insignificant since it was the Games which allowed our river, a true green lung, to be swimmable again. “It’s a testament to what the Games can leave as a legacy,” she explains.
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We remember the controversies following the cases of athletes suffering from gastro after a competition in the Seine this summer. Among others, the Vaudois triathlete Adrien Briffod had to withdraw for the mixed relay event at the beginning of August following a gastrointestinal infection following the individual events. As with other swimmers suffering from the same illness, attention was focused on the quality of the water, without the link being able to be attested.
The Seine for Parisians in 2025
France has injected 1.4 billion euros since 2016 to make the Seine and its main tributary, the Marne, swimmable. Modernization of wastewater treatment plants, connection of barges to the sewer system, collection of plastic waste… The plan also resulted in five major works, including a rainwater and wastewater retention basin near the train station. Austerlitz, a veritable underground cathedral dug in the very center of Paris.
This basin operated twice during storms in June and July. It avoided 40,000 then 15,000 m³ of spills in the Seine “which would have been deleterious for the quality of the water for several days”, greeted Samuel Colin-Canivez, responsible for the major works of the sanitation network, before the Olympic ceremony.
In the event of intense precipitation, untreated water can be released into the river, a phenomenon that the retention works inaugurated just before the Games are intended to prevent.
From summer 2025, all Parisians must be allowed to swim.
AFP/MCO
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