Tension on the Seine as Paris counts down the days to the Olympics

Heavy rain, pollution, security fears, possible cancellations – the spotlight is on the river that runs through much of France and has its most problematic point in the capital.

The idea of the French to do something different was serious. They wanted to stand out and be unique, just like their historical culture. The truth is that they organised an Olympic Games where the focus had to be on grandeur.

The aim was to surpass Beijing 2008, or at least come close to what many consider to be the best Olympic Games in memory. Difficult, but not impossible. If they couldn’t match it, Plan B was to at least beat a well-known rival, London.

With this in mind, a spectacular opening ceremony was planned for 26 July on the banks of the River Seine, the first time the Summer Games had begun outside a main stadium. Hundreds of thousands of fans applauded a dynamic and lively ceremony on the banks of the emblematic river in the French capital, with athletes parading on giant barges for the history books.

The concept was brilliant in every way. The execution? Quite challenging. Subject to constant changes due to security, pollution and Mother Nature, which are beyond human control.

In this context, the river is the absolute protagonist. But the Seine wasn’t just the star of the opening ceremony. Like a saga, the chapters couldn’t end with the inauguration ceremony. Other episodes had to be written for such an important river, which had to be freed from the serious pollution that had made it illegal to swim in it since 1923 (except in rare cases).

Politically, it was a golden opportunity to showcase the clean-up of an iconic river in France, known the world over. The grandeur of France would be etched in the world’s memory with such an achievement. The idea of holding open water swimming (10 km), triathlon and Paralympic events (in September) was a fantastic concept to achieve this.

But, as in any film, “it can’t have a happy ending from the start” and things start to get complicated, adding actors and with them emotion or at least attention to the story.

The Seine has had all this recently. As the clock ticks down, the river is currently too fast for rehearsals and too dirty for sports.

Unusually strong currents forced organisers to cancel the first full rehearsal for the opening ceremony, scheduled for Monday, involving all 85 boats that will carry athletes along a six-kilometre route.

“If the current is too fast, it will be a serious problem for the opening ceremony,” hydrologist Jean-Marie Mouchel told AFP.

After weeks of unusually wet weather, the Seine is overflowing its banks, with the flow measured last Friday at 500 m³/second (18,000 ft³/second), around four to five times the normal level for the summer months, setting off alarm bells, although organisers remain confident that Mother Nature will not play a trick on them and that everything will go according to plan.

The heavy rains in May and June have also caused significant pollution problems. The equation is simple: more rain means more pollution.

French authorities have invested €1.4 billion over the past decade to clean up the river by upgrading Paris’s sewerage system and building new water treatment and storage facilities. But heavy storms still overwhelm the sewerage network, some of which dates back to the 19th century, and lead to untreated sewage being discharged directly into the river. In other words, sanitation has improved, but not enough. With the heavy rains, there are no environmental solutions.

More rain means more E. coli in the water, making it unsafe to swim. Test results released last Friday showed that levels of E. coli – a bacteria that indicates faecal matter – were often twice the maximum allowed for Olympic swimming during the week of 10-16 June.

“There is no doubt that the water quality is not there yet,” said Marc Guillaume, the top government official for the Paris region, while remaining optimistic that the dry summer weather would solve the problem.

The latest readings “are not in line with the standards we will have in the summer,” he added.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who has proposed creating public bathing areas in the river for the summer of 2025, had to postpone a high-profile swim to demonstrate its cleanliness on Sunday. She has now promised to take to the water during the week of 14 July; time will tell if this was a political stunt or if she will actually swim in the Seine.

The saga of the Seine couldn’t end with the daunting task of cleaning up a river that has been polluted for so many years. Another protagonist had to be added, unwillingly of course, but a protagonist nonetheless: security and the growing fear of terrorist threats.

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The opening ceremony continues to cause sleepless nights for France’s security forces, given the number of people involved and the difficulty of securing such a large area.

Although the number of spectators has been halved, the fact that more than 300,000 people will have tickets to watch, with hundreds of thousands more watching from balconies and open windows, poses an additional problem. Securing a stadium and its environs is not the same as securing several kilometres where not only ticket holders, who have been screened by security, will be present.

The number of buildings overlooking the river complicates the security operation at a time of heightened fears of terrorism, which in the past has led to resistance from senior police officers.

Although snipers will be positioned on every building in the vicinity, and 45,000 security personnel will be deployed, the terrorists have a huge target. This is the organisers’ fault, because if the event had been held in a stadium, the chances of a terrorist attack wouldn’t have increased exponentially.

“It’s the opening ceremony that worries us the most,” said a senior police official recently, speaking on condition of anonymity.

When asked about contingency plans in the event of a credible threat to the ceremony, Paris 2024 organisers publicly insist that there is no alternative to holding it on the river. That’s logical, as it’s crucial to reassure the public.

Behind the scenes, there is speculation that a much shortened parade over a bridge in front of the Eiffel Tower could be an option. The dynamic nature of this event will be on display in the week leading up to the ceremony. Every effort will be made to avoid changing the plans that have already been drawn up, as this would be like starting the game with a handicap.

In the case of open water swimming, the organisers have flexibility in the schedule, allowing them to postpone the event for several days in the event of a downpour that increases pollution and makes swimming dangerous.

In the worst case, it would be cancelled and the triathlon would become a duathlon – just running and cycling – with no swimming. The athletes are busy training and trying to ignore the noise, although it’s unusual not to know the day of the event or to be sure that it will take place within the chosen window.

“There have always been problems,” French open water swimming coach Stephane Lecat said last week. “There are places in Europe that are a lot worse than the Seine and we swim there every year,” added the former open water bronze medallist at the 2001 World Championships (25km).