The 2024 Paris Olympics has drawn to a close. Filled with the quintessential moments we know and love, this year’s games painted a brighter picture of international cooperation than we have been familiar with in the media. We were treated to such moments as North and South Korea taking a selfie on the winner’s podium and the comedic timing of John Lennon’s “Imagine” being played to cool tensions at the women’s beach volleyball. For several weeks the world focused on stories of top-tier athletes playing out against the beautiful backdrop of Paris. The use of French architecture and identity was paramount to sporting arena design. Its use as a focal point created temporarily iconic venues such as the Eiffel Tower Stadium, setting the scene for beach volleyball and utilising the history of Château de Versailles to stage the equestrian and modern pentathlon events. The venues are some of the most memorable aspects of the Olympics and Paris left its signature on all.
It was the brave move to incorporate the Seine into the venue programming that caught the world’s attention, as to do so was to achieve the seemingly impossible. While it was previously used in the 1900 Olympics, officially the Seine had not been swimmable for 100 years having been made illegal in 1923. The Seine’s pollution combines local population waste with agriculture and industrial runoff. This coupled with an outdated drainage system led it to be described as “an open sewer” in the years before the games. Despite a monumental effort to have it ready on time organisers still encountered issues during the games with the delay of the triathlon due to rainfall. While stories of athletes falling ill after swimming in the river have spread, none of their illnesses are linked to the river’s cleanliness.
Making the Seine swimmable dates back as far as 1898 when laws to improve water quality began to be passed. In 1988 Jacques Chirac famously claimed;
“In three years, I will swim in the Seine”
adding to his list of never-achieved promises including lowering taxes and not putting a cap on public healthcare expenditure. It was in 2015 that the official effort began to make it the swimmable centrepiece of this year’s games. The initial steps started a slow and steady increase of multiple fish species re-entering the river. At this moment in time, there are reported to be over 34 species of fish in habitation, including salmon, catfish, and pike. The salmon return was lovingly documented by Hemingway’s grandson John in the Atlantic Salmon Journal, painting a picture of river rejuvenation.
Over the next nine years 23,000 homes were connected to municipal sewer systems and aeration tanks were installed to filter pollution in the water. At Austerlitz train station an enormous underground drainage basin was constructed. With a depth of 30m, a holding capacity of 50,000 m3, and a volume of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools, this enormous hole in the ground collects the polluted rainwater that would have normally flooded into the Seine. On top of this, further drainage basins are constructed at Ru Saint-Badile and between Essone and Val-de-Marne as well as the Val-de-Marne stormwater treatment centre. This cohesive effort cost €1.4 billion and has benefits set to extend long past the end of the games.
The initial objective was to create an Olympic venue and have a positive environmental impact the secondary objective comes with the creation of swimming facilities to be opened in 2025. Paris lacks public swimming facilities in comparison to other major European cities, only having 38 municipal pools while cities such as Berlin have in excess of 60 indoor pools alone. Despite the smaller number of facilities, Paris has a positive relationship with urban swimming. It hosts 10 outdoor public swimming pools that like current Olympic venues are complimented by stunning architecture such as Piscine Georges Vallerey. Used previously in the 1924 Olympics, the location is complimented by a retractable roof covered in a wicker basket-esque design that makes for ideal surroundings to swim lengths at. 2017 saw the launch of Bassin de la Villette, three pools constructed in an artificial lake connected to the Seine thanks to the “Swimming in Paris” project. These modern swimming locations are free to use and incorporate filtered water from the river’s runoff. This location paints a picture of what we can possibly see going into the future with the official locations for swimming in the Seine announced for Bras Marie, Bras de Grenelle, and Bercy.
Public swimming facilities in urban environments are essential pieces of architecture which benefit citizens of all backgrounds. Historically they have been used to create a space for racial integration in the USA, provide relief from the sweltering summer heat, create jobs, and educate with swimming lessons. They are small pockets of tranquillity nestled amongst the chaos and the noise surrounding them. Refreshing yourself in cool water is proven to improve mood, cognitive function, and memory. When you exist in an environment that negatively affects all of these aspects escaping to the water for a low-cost fee gives you the resources to combat the mentally draining effects. Socio-economically public swimming removes signifiers of class and places everyone on a level playing field. For a few hours, people can escape and simply enjoy a shared experience.
Swimming in the Seine can do a revolutionary act opening up access for citizens to a large source of water in a city that hasn’t had one for a long time. Swimming or bathing when living in an urban environment requires escaping to a beach, going on holiday, or using one of the currently crowded public swimming facilities. These of course require time, money, and planning aspects not everyone is lucky to have. Democratising the city’s water is one of the best benefits of Olympic sporting spaces in recent history. It’s been a not-so-well-kept secret that sporting arenas created for the Olympics consistently are abandoned after the games. This is not a phenomenon of the past, facilities from recent host cities like Rio, Beijing, and Turin sit idle after the millions spent to create them. This initiative of reviving allows the Paris Olympic Committee to bypass this and create something intended for everyone and to be used long after the games are over, leaving a positive legacy.
The hard work has been done. However, to keep this consistent requires continued maintenance and a highly effective marketing campaign that goes beyond the games to bring people in and use the facilities. Building trust in a river that has been illegal to swim for 100 years will be hard work. Consistent monitoring of the water quality and E. Coli levels will be occurring. This is necessary to decide if the 2025 pools can be considered safe to open. Ships that need to unload waste are now legally obliged to do this through the sewer system at facilities that harbours must have available, locally known as the Olympics law.
Despite all this work, there is a serious hindrance lurking beneath the spectacle, engineering works, and new law. Regardless of the size or the amount of rainwater collection facilities, when it does rain the river becomes unsafe to swim in. For all the investment they can’t contain all the water required to declare the river safe every day. Overflow from these collection points will always return to the river and increase bacteria levels to an unsafe level due to polluted rainfall. This is why we saw events cancelled on the day and any media opportunity of politicians swimming in it before the games occurring on ideal conditions. No matter any attempt at cleaning, the safety of swimming facilities on the Seine will depend entirely on what the weather brings. While this clean-up movement is admirable and one of the few times in recent memory that the environment has been made the focus of an Olympic committee, the fact remains that urban rivers can never be considered consistently safe to swim in. The slogan “Make the Seine Swimmable” has a much better ring to it than “Make the Seine Temporarily Swimmable”.
So what does this all mean for the future? While this information isn’t ideal, I believe we will see people using the 2025 facilities following the success of Baissin de Villette. For such a long time swimming has been impossible in these locations and now it’s finally achievable, in spite of the weather-dependency. What will be interesting to see, is whether people will swim outside of these facilities, truly reclaiming the river for the city. With 100 years of mistrust, the fear of bacterial infections at a high post-COVID-19, and the optics of athletes vomiting after swimming in the events the chances of this appear unlikely. However, we know humans love a challenge. The annual Liffey swim in Dublin breaks every rule for swimming in contaminated waters and consistently athletes participate from home and abroad for the thrill to swim in an iconic location. The thrill of the experience, defying the odds, and challenging fate will always be too good of an opportunity to pass up.
