Given the price of a drink at restaurants near the Eiffel Tower, the unwitting English tourist presumably thought he was getting a bargain. After purchasing a bottle of water from a street vendor who’d set up a stall across the river from the monument, the customer was advised not to consume the product, a “finement polluée” – or finely polluted – bottle of ‘Eau de Seine’.
The vendor was later unmasked as French street artist, James Colomina, who dreamed up the stunt to draw attention to the €1.4 billion invested in efforts to clean up the Seine for the Olympics – money that he, and other critics, felt could have been spent more wisely.
A pledge to make the river swimmable formed the centrepiece of Paris’s successful bid to host the 2024 Games. As well as the opening ceremony, the Seine will be the venue for the triathlon and swimming marathon. But despite the costly infrastructure upgrade – which included the construction of a large underground wastewater reservoir – it’s not entirely certain that the river will be clean enough for those competitions to proceed as planned. Paris is experiencing an unseasonably wet summer, leading to concerns that bacteria-laden sewage could be washed into the Seine, in the event of further heavy rain.
Those concerns have been flagged consistently since as far back as April of last year. Swimming trials were repeatedly delayed over the summer because the water quality had dipped below acceptable standards.
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Politicians – including Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and Olympics Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra – have been lining up to take the plunge to prove that the tide has finally turned. Emmanuel Macron has so far failed to follow up on his pledge to test the waters, with the Élysée clarifying that the president had never promised to do so before the Games.
The uncertainty about the readiness of the Seine seemed to reflect an underlying anxiety about how the Olympics itself will play out.
A co-ordinated sabotage attack on the French railway system on Friday – which involved vandalism to signal boxes along the lines connecting Paris with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east and the Eurostar connection between Lille and Paris – left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded. It had not, at the time of writing, spread to the French capital, which has been under effective lockdown for weeks. But security was expected to be tightened even further ahead of the opening ceremony.
Despite everything, the sense of collective dread about the logistical impact of the Games was beginning to lift in Paris towards the end of the week. “It’s more chaotic than festive,” says bookstore cashier Paul Hevak. “Maybe there’ll be a wave of national pride if our athletes do well, but most people I know don’t have any interest in the Olympics.”
Sitting in an otherwise empty restaurant, Mélanie Desliens says she’s looking forward to the Olympics. “I’m excited. I have tickets for tennis and swimming. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Nothing can beat what Paris has to offer in terms of its historic monuments and its beauty.” She says she hopes “everything runs smoothly”, given that the event is taking place in the aftermath of a hugely divisive and ultimately inconclusive election. “The last few months have been hard. We need this.”
This is a sentiment also expressed by President Macron, who’s declared an “Olympics truce”. After weeks of internal squabbling over who to put forward as their candidate for prime minister, the left-wing New Popular Front, which won the largest number of seats in parliament, this week nominated Lucie Castets, a hitherto unknown economist and finance director at City Hall. But Macron says he won’t be making any decision about the role until after the Games.
Voters are also keen to put politics on the back burner. “The Olympics will energise the country,” says Jean Mireille. He and his wife, Ruiz, are at Place de la Concorde, peering through metal barricades at the temporary site built to host urban sports such as break dancing, skateboarding and BMX freestyling. The venues are only accessible to ticket holders and those with special security passes in the form of a QR code.
In Paris to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary, the Mireilles say Olympic fever hit their southeastern village, St Saturnin-lès-Avignon, when the torch relay passed through last month. “It went right by our house,” says Jean. “It was magnificent, very moving. Especially after the elections. It brought us together. Once the Games get going, I think Parisians will start to enjoy themselves. For them, the glass is always half empty,” he says, mischievously.
Also half empty in the run-up to the Games is much of central Paris, to the delight of residents, and the consternation of retailers and those in the hospitality sector. Ezaz Damka, manager of a food outlet opposite the Louvre, says “footfall is down by 80 per cent. We’ve been open for three hours, since 8am, and haven’t even sold one sandwich. It’s tough”.
With tens of thousands of police officers and military personnel deployed for the Games, security services appear to outnumber tourists. “I feel like I’m in a war zone,” says Cassidy Jackson-Carroll from Brisbane, Australia. “Is that normal?” she asks, pointing towards a group of machine gun-wielding soldiers on patrol at Opéra. A diehard Olympics fan, with tickets for more than a dozen events, it’s her seventh time to travel for the Games.
“The vibe here is different from what I’m used to,” she says. “Londoners were also a bit grumpy before the Olympics (in 2012), but as soon as it kicked off, they got into it and really supported it.”
The symbolism of the Games has already begun to cast its spell. Not universally regarded as the most sentimental of souls, construction workers were filmed by a documentary crew as they installed the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower. Site director Pierre Engel asked his team to play Nessun Dorma on loudspeakers as they were hoisted into the night sky. “It’s quite magical,” he said. “We didn’t think it would be so intense.”
Less magical, though for most Parisians, is the prospect of one day bathing beneath the Eiffel Tower in the waters of the Seine. City officials say several swimming spots should be open to the public by next summer. “My son is a fisherman,” says one amused passerby. “I know what’s down there.”
Sharon Gaffney is a journalist based in Paris
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