PARIS (AP) – French President Emmanuel Macron launched the 500-day countdown to the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics on Tuesday, bringing the public up to date with his government’s hopes for the Games, including the ambitious use of the Seine.
Macron addressed hundreds of officials at a “speech of thanks” in the Paris police headquarters, saying that though plans are advancing “nothing should be taken as a guarantee”.
“All that remains for us are 500 short days that separate us from the extraordinary events that are the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games, (where) we are going to host the world,” Macron said.
In the speech and on Twitter, Macron thanked the 45,000 volunteers mobilising to make the Games “a success” and again trumpeted the 5,000 new sports grounds that are in the works.
Officials are pushing to get infrastructure and sites ready in time, with projects pockmarking many of Paris’ boulevards. Macron also made reference to the ambitious EUR1.4-billion (USD1.5 billion) scheme to clean the polluted waters of Paris’ main river artery.
“The Seine and the Marne (rivers) will be made swimmable,” he said. Several events are to be held in the Seine, including the 10-kilometre swimming marathon – in a mirror of the first Paris Olympics in 1900.
Macron also hopes to ditch tradition by staging the opening ceremony on water in an ambitious plan that will see craft floating on the Seine by the Eiffel Tower – as millions watch.
The Paris Games’ budget is at EUR4.4 billion (USD4.7 billion), according to an Elysee official who spoke anonymously in line with the French presidency’s customary practices.
