Later this summer, the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics will take place on the Seine. Boats full of the best athletes in the world will float down the Parisian river, and just before they reach the Eiffel Tower, they’ll pass an equally important place of city history: the Musée des Égouts (the Museum of Sewers). Why does this city have a museum dedicated to its sewers? Well, the Paris sewer system has a rich and interesting history that dates back centuries. Which is a polite way of saying that the city is old as hell, and as such, sometimes sewage ends up in the Seine.
That is nasty, yes, but it’s even nastier when you hear that the big plan for the Olympics is that athletes will be swimming in that dirty water. Have they cleaned the water? They’ve tried. Has it worked? Not really. People are actually threatening to poop directly in the Seine now out of spite. Is this going to be a huge mess? Almost certainly. If you’re anything like me, you want to know more about a gross situation, so here are some answers to your questions.
Why are athletes going to swim in the Seine?
In the modern history of the Games, Olympians have been open-water swimming since 2000, when the triathlon debuted as an event in Sydney. In 2008, the 10K marathon swim was added and is routinely done in open water. So, one reason for the Seine swimming is that it’s just what happens at the Olympics.
The more interesting reason for some of our finest athletes risking some kind of weird infection is that French politicians have been promising a cleaner Seine for almost a decade now. In 2015, Paris’s plan baignade (swimming plan) went into effect with the goal of making the river swimmable not just for the 2024 Olympians but for regular Parisians as well.
“Our objective is an Olympic legacy,” Pierre Rabadan, the deputy mayor in charge of sport, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the Seine, told National Geographic. “That you and me or whoever happens to be in Paris can swim in the Seine.”
The plan is that by next summer, the water will be wonderful and three sites along the river will be open for recreational swimming. Will anyone take them up on that? Parisians famously do not stick around for a lot of the summer, but I bet this will be awesome for Australians on holiday.
What exactly is in the river?
It’s poop. Poop is what’s in the river. A recent report found that there were elevated levels of E. coli in the Seine in samples collected earlier this month (June 10–16). When there’s heavy rain (which there has been a lot of recently), the sewers deposit directly into the river. France has spent $1.5 billion trying to clean up a sewer system that’s been in place since the late 19th century, but all the money in the world can’t buy sunshine. The report noted that what usually kills some of the bacteria in the water is the sun and heat, and lately it’s been particularly gloomy in the City of Light.
Is the river ready for swimmers?
Not really. Last year, several test events were canceled due to the high levels of E. coli in the water. Now, the first Olympic event in the Seine will (supposedly) be the men’s triathlon on July 30, and the E. coli levels are still high. To get people onboard with the idea that swimming in the Seine would actually be totally chill and healthy, French president Emmanuel Macron and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo pledged to be the first people to hop in. Because French people love to protest, they quickly rallied on social media to create the hashtag #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin, which translates to #IShitInTheSeineJune23.
Soon, a website was created to give people all the information they would need so that Macron and Hidalgo would have the shittiest swim possible. There was even a tool for those who lived upstream of Paris, helping them figure out exactly when they’d need to deposit their business so that it would float down in time to greet the politicians for the big event.
Sadly, the poopers were foiled (for now). Macron and Hidalgo were supposed to take the inaugural swim on June 23 but have since rescheduled their dip for mid-July. Interestingly, it wasn’t postponed due to poop levels but rather the current political atmosphere in France. “We’re going to give ourselves time to get through the legislative elections,” Hidalgo said earlier in the month. Someone smarter than I am can tell you what’s going on there, but I have to imagine it’s not a good look to get into your swimsuit when a far-right party might soon be taking over your country’s government.
But did people still poop in the Seine?
That is hard to get a definitive answer on. If I had to guess, I’d say that at least one teenager did it to make his friends laugh; this was always more of a meme than an actual plan of action. One TikTok user walked up the Seine on the day the great pooping was supposed to take place and saw no one actually doing the deed (or throwing their deed into the water). She did note that the water, with or without extra fecal matter, looked “super-brown.”
Are Macron and Hidalgo actually going to get in the water? Is anyone?
Would you? These two have kind of backed themselves into a corner, and now it seems like they have to swim in the Seine. Although I imagine it would be really embarrassing to lose your parliament to Marine Le Pen’s party and then have to get in your swimsuit in front of the entire country and jump into poop water. Metaphor alert! If things go poorly for progressives in France, I’d bet that Macron and Hidalgo find a way out of this swim. Whether or not the Olympians have that ability is to be determined.
While organizers have said that there is no plan B, athletes are wondering if there maybe could be. “We need a plan B in case it’s not possible to swim in the Seine,” Brazilian swimmer Ana Marcela Cunha told AFP back in March. “The Seine is not made for swimming.”
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