Emmanuel Macron still plans to swim in the River Seine as promised but “not necessarily” before the Paris Olympic Games which begin in a week, the Elysee presidential office said on Friday.
The French president has insisted several times that he would dive into the capital’s river to highlight the possibility of swimming there again thanks to major depollution work, and to reassure about the quality of the water.
But Macron, 46, never set a date, and did not join Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo who both took a dip in the murky waters in the past week.
“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,” a spokesperson for the president told journalists on Friday.
“He will not necessarily have the opportunity to do so before the Games.”
A presidential adviser clarified that no date had been set. “As he said when he announced it, what seems essential to him beyond the fact that it allows us to organise Olympic competitions, is that it will above all allow us to open swimming sites for all the numerous residents of the Ile-de-France region in the years to come,” the adviser continued.
“It will therefore undoubtedly be in this spirit that he will have the opportunity to swim when he is able to do so.”
Earlier Friday, Paris city hall announced the Seine had been clean enough to swim in for six of seven days tested between July 10-16.
Weather permitting, the river will be the star of the opening ceremony of the Games on July 26 and will then host the triathlon and the swimming marathon.
Despite improving water quality results since the end of June, suspense remains over whether these competitions can go ahead on the river through the French capital.
Although the river’s E.Coli bacterial level was below the thresholds six days a week at the sampling point on the Alexandre-III bridge, results from three other Parisian sites are much more mixed.
In the event of heavy rain, untreated sewage can be washed into the river.
A downpour on July 9 “impacted the water quality of the Seine”, as did storms and rain overnight July 11 to 12, regional authorities said.
But in both cases, the water quality quickly recovered, in two or three days.
A positive note for organisers is that the flow of the Seine, still unseasonably high which unfavourably impacts water quality, continues to decrease thanks to dry weather.
If the quality is below standards a ‘Plan B’ involves postponing the events for a few days or moving the marathon swimming to Vaires-sur-Marne, on the Marne river east of Paris.