French President Emmanuel Macron is completely backtracking on a promise he made to the people to swim in the Seine. The Olympics will get underway in Paris next weekend and the 46-year-old has yet to hop in the water.
He is trying to get off on an extremely lame technicality.
Macron is trying to claim that his promise was not to swim in the Seine prior to the Olympics. Rather, his promise was just to swim in the Seine, at some point in time, eventually.
“He didn’t announce that he was going to swim before the Olympics, he announced that he was going to swim and he has always expressed this certainty. He will not necessarily have the opportunity to do so before the Games.”
— A spokesperson for the president
A date has not been set for Macron’s swim. There is no telling when it could happen, if it happens at all.
The Seine, which is referred to as a river, runs through the heart of Paris. It is technically a drainage basin and it plays a very large role in the city’s landscape. Some might call it the centerpiece.
The Seine is going to host the triathlon and swimming marathon for the Olympics. However, it has been illegal to swim in the Seine for more than 120 years because it is too dirty.
Heavy rains overwhelm Paris’ infrastructure and sewage leaks into the basin. The poop water is contaminated by large levels of E. coli and other bacteria, which then spills into the Seine.
France spent approximately $1.5 billion to clean it up for the Games and efforts largely failed at first.
In fact, the water was contaminated by unsafe levels of bacteria as recently as early July. Abnormal amounts of rain during the spring put the open-water swim events in doubt until very recently.
Paris city hall announced on Friday that the Seine was clean enough to swim in for six out of the seven days tested between July 10-16. Things are trending in the right direction and the two open-water events are expected to go on as planned!
Here is where Macron comes into the picture.
To prove that the water is safe for swimming, he and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo vowed to hop in the water back at the end of June. They postponed due to “political reasons,” even though that was probably just an excuse to avoid the citywide poop protest and unsafe levels of bacteria.
Now that the water is cleaner, French sports minister Améilie Odéa-Castéra made good on the promise last weekend. Hidalgo and her entire staff finally went for a swim in the Seine on Wednesday.
Macron has yet to swim and it doesn’t sound like he is going to do so before the Olympics begin, which totally defeats the purpose.
His spokesperson insists it is still going to happen. And by doing so after the Games, it “allow [France] to open swimming sites for all the numerous residents of the Ile-de-France region in the years to come.”
Meanwhile, Parisians vow to never swim in the Seine because it is still too dirty… so…