{"id":52611,"date":"2026-08-08T16:53:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T11:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=52611"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:53:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T11:08:22","slug":"high-divers-take-the-plunge-in-the-seine-in-a-new-test-of-paris-reclaimed-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/high-divers-take-the-plunge-in-the-seine-in-a-new-test-of-paris-reclaimed-river\/","title":{"rendered":"High divers take the plunge in the Seine in a new test of Paris\u2019 reclaimed river"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Paris is staging its first high-diving competition in the Seine, with athletes launching themselves from a 20-meter platform in front of the Eiffel Tower \u2014 a spectacular new test of the city\u2019s effort to reclaim its river for sport.<\/p>\n

The event on the Bir-Hakeim Bridge has also exposed the fragility of that ambition: Organizers suspended training Thursday when traces of hydrocarbons were detected upstream. By Friday, the French Swimming Federation said the affected area had been treated, allowing athletes to return to the water and the event to proceed as planned.<\/p>\n

High diving concludes Saturday with the final two rounds and medal events, while the broader European Aquatics Championships run through Aug. 16.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things that are within our control, and there are uncertainties that are inevitably linked to any outdoor activity,\u201d said Maxime Sauvage, Paris deputy mayor in charge of sports, sports facilities and equal access to sport.<\/p>\n

Among the things within the city\u2019s control, he said, are the massive investments made before the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games to make the river safe for swimming, from work to prevent sewage from flowing directly into the Seine to improvements in stormwater management.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is always a small risk, but that is also part of what makes outdoor events special,\u201d Sauvage said. \u201cWhen they work, it is magical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hundreds of people gathered along the riverbanks Friday to watch the divers. Some stopped during their lunch break, while others stumbled across the competition by chance.<\/p>\n

Among them was Rebecca Kapogiannis, a 45-year-old visitor from London, Ontario, who was visiting Paris with her daughter to celebrate her graduation. Her daughter had even packed a bathing suit in case she got the chance to swim in the Seine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just headed down to the (Eiffel) Tower today and thought we would walk along the Seine and stumbled upon this and thought it was a really cool activity to watch,\u201d she told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not expecting a competition to take place in the Seine, but I think it\u2019s such a cool use of this water that runs right through the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Cynthia Matz, who was visiting Paris with her husband, Sean, the setting itself was part of the draw. She said they probably would not have sought out the competition had it been held inside an aquatics center.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnybody can go. I don\u2019t have to know anything about diving. I can just say, \u2018This is really cool to see,\u2019\u201d Matz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving it out in public, people will just stop and go, \u2018Huh, what\u2019s going on?\u2019 and stop and spend some time and enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That ability to stumble across elite sport in the middle of the city reflects a broader transformation Paris officials have been pushing for years: turning the Seine from a river associated largely with commerce, transport and tourism into a place where people can also swim, play and compete.<\/p>\n

The 38th European Aquatics Championships, from July 31 to Aug. 16, mark the centenary of the inaugural championships, held in Budapest in 1926. For Paris, they are a return of another kind: The French capital last hosted the event in 1931.<\/p>\n

More than 1,000 athletes are competing across five disciplines: swimming, diving, artistic swimming, open-water swimming and high diving.<\/p>\n

The Seine is hosting both open-water swimming and high diving, placing the river back at the center of a major international sporting event two years after the Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n

Swimming in the Seine was officially banned in 1923 amid pollution and the dangers of river traffic. Public swimming returned only in 2025, after Paris and its partners mobilized 1.4 billion euros to make the river swimmable, an effort accelerated by the Olympics.<\/p>\n

For many French people, former President Jacques Chirac\u2019s 1988 pledge, when he was mayor of Paris, to make the Seine clean enough for swimming again seemed like a distant dream.<\/p>\n

But since the 2024 Olympics, images of athletes competing \u2014 and now residents swimming \u2014 in the river have become almost familiar.<\/p>\n

Around 70,000 people used the city\u2019s designated Seine swimming areas in July, according to Paris City Hall, compared with nearly 100,000 during the entire summer last year, suggesting growing public interest in reclaiming the river for recreation.<\/p>\n

Bringing sport into daily Parisian life has been an objective across successive city administrations. Under Emmanuel Gr\u00e9goire, elected mayor in March, Sauvage said the mission is to \u201cmake the entire city increasingly favorable to physical activity and sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor decades, the Seine was limited to economic purposes, tourism with sightseeing boats, and logistics with ships loading and unloading goods in Paris,\u201d Sauvage said. \u201cIt was a river with high levels of pollution that also had a significant impact on its biodiversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, he says, the aim is to add another identity to the river without erasing the others.<\/p>\n

\u201cParis is not just a postcard image, it is also a magnificent sporting venue,\u201d Sauvage said. \u201cIt is a city that people come to visit, but it is also a city to be experienced by bike, through running, through sport, through play and through swimming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paris is staging its first high-diving competition in the Seine, with athletes launching themselves from a 20-meter platform in front of the Eiffel Tower \u2014 a spectacular new test of the city\u2019s effort to reclaim its river for sport. The event on the Bir-Hakeim Bridge has also exposed the fragility of that ambition: Organizers suspended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52611"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52613,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52611\/revisions\/52613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}