Anne Hidalgo promises that it will be possible to “swim in the Seine” at the Paris 2024 Games and opens the doors to Lionel Messi: “This city will be his city!”

TOKYO - Everything indicates that Paris will be a party. Not only because the mayor of the French capital, Anne Hidalgo, promises that it will be possible to “swim in the Seine” during the 2024 Olympic Games: she is also excited about a possible arrival of Lionel Messi at Paris Saint-Germain after the surprising end of the Argentine’s historic relationship with Barcelona.

Hidalgo’s eyes sparkle and she laughs enthusiastically when Around the Rings asks her in Tokyo about the eventual arrival of the Argentina national team captain at PSG.

“Let him come. I don’t know anything, but let him come!”.

“I am a big fan of Messi, I would like him to come, but I have no news of this.”

But he would be welcome in Paris?

“Uy, of course he would, this city will be his city!” the mayor finished off in her perfect Spanish with a slight French accent.

Born 62 years ago in San Fernando, in the Spanish province of Cadiz, Hidalgo is the daughter of a Spanish socialist who sought refuge in France at the end of the Civil War with his wife and four children. She is the most important figure in the French Socialist Party, which ruled for years in the Fifth Republic from the Elysée Palace.

Hidalgo believes that the Games led by Tony Estanguet, three-time Olympic gold medalist in canoe, have a parallel with the only ones held in her home country, those of Barcelona 92.

“I see a parallel because for me the Barcelona Games completely changed the city. The city opened up to the sea. In Paris it’s a bit different. What we have to transform is the relationship between Paris and the outskirts of Paris, especially the north of Paris, where we needed to have a very important urban and social transformation, and that is going to change.”

Any tourist knows that the left and right banks of the Seine offer a very different Paris, but Hidalgo assured that during the Games, and in the following years, the protagonist will be the river. And, above all, its waters.

“Another issue, also very important in the transformation of Paris is the environmental issue, especially in the relationship with the Seine, with the river. There was an idea a long time ago by Jacques Chirac, when he was mayor of Paris, who said that one day we would swim in the Seine. For me it’s very important, because with climate change, cities like Paris, which has no sea, but has a river, needs to open up to the river as well.”

To what extent would Paris open up to the river? The mayor is very clear: “That the river is not only a place where cars used to pass by the river, that’s over, because I have already made a very wide promenade around the river, but we also have to go to the river, inside the river and swim in the river. And that transformation of making the Seine a river where you can swim is a transformation that we’re going to achieve with the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

Is that so, by 2024 will it be possible to swim in the Seine, Around the Rings asked the mayor.

“Yes, by the 24th, by the 24th. And beyond, because it will be a legacy of the Games. Beyond, of course,” insisted the elegant Hidalgo, who on Sunday will receive the Olympic flag in Tokyo from her Japanese counterpart.

A distinctive sign of the Paris Games is the desire to hold an opening ceremony in the middle of the city and abandon the traditional Olympic stadium stage. An idea already implemented by Buenos Aires during the 2018 Youth Games, and which was a success. Hidalgo says she was inspired by that ceremony in Argentina and talked about it with the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.

“We watched it and it was great. Yes, that interested me a lot, and from the beginning of the Paris bid with Tony we talked about this. I said to him, look, I think we can perhaps have a ceremony to open the Games that is less conventional than in a stadium and that can be done in the center of the city.”

“We worked on this and wanted to know if it was possible to do it. Today we are almost certain that it is possible and that we will do it, and it will be a moment, like the Youth Games in Buenos Aires, which will be an exceptional moment that thousands and thousands of people will be able to enjoy. Those who come to the ceremony and also those who are strolling in the area, who will be able to watch the ceremony on the Seine.”

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