Emmanuel Macron promises that he will swim in the Seine (but does not say when)

Emmanuel Macron wants to take the plunge. The President of the Republic promised, Thursday February 29, to go swimming in the Seine, an opportunity which will be offered to Ile-de-France residents in the summer of 2025 and which will constitute “an important legacy” of the Olympic Games. “And how! Yes, I will go”replied the head of state to journalists. “But I’m not going to give you the date, you might be there”, he joked on the occasion of the inauguration of the Olympic Village for the Paris Games. The president’s sentence recalls the unfulfilled commitment made by Jacques Chirac in 1990.

The Olympic Games must inaugurate the reunion of swimming with the Seine: the triathlon and open water swimming events will start from the Alexandre-III bridge which connects the Grand Palais to the Invalides. The mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo indicated at the beginning of January that she would swim in the Seine in July, just before the Olympics and a year before the opening of three swimming areas in the river in Paris: at Bercy, at Grenelle and at Saint-Louis Island.

“For Ile-de-France residents, we will have Seine and Marne which will also have changed their face and use”rejoiced the Head of State, evoking “important legacies” left by the Olympic Games in terms of developments. “For the Seine and the Marne, there was an extraordinary investment that was made”, he congratulated himself. Since 2016, the State and local authorities in Ile-de-France have invested around 1.4 billion euros to make the Seine and the Marne, its main tributary, swimmable.