Macron kicks off Olympic countdown 500 days before Paris Games
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French President Emmanuel Macron launches the countdown to the 2024 Paris Olympics on Tuesday, taking stock of preparations for the mammoth event as officials race to get the city’s transport network into shape and stage an opening ceremony unlike any other.
Macron, who has promised an “unforgettable” curtain-raiser, hosted the Olympics’ organisers and business partners at the Élysée Palace to discuss preparations for the world’s biggest sporting event. He addresses several hundred civil servants involved in the effort in a speech at Paris police headquarters, on the banks of the River Seine, later Tuesday.
On the eve of his visit, Macron teased the event by tweeting the cover of Time Magazine’s latest issue, headlined on the race to clean up “the world’s most romantic river”.
“With 500 days to go, we are within reach of achieving one of the greatest legacies of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris,” the French president wrote, referencing a hugely ambitious 1.4-billion-euro plan to clean up the heavily polluted waterway in time for the Games.
Rendre la Seine et la Marne baignables.
C’est notre objectif pour 2024. 1,4 milliard d’euros investis, dont la moitié par l’État.
À J-500, nous sommes en passe de réussir ce qui sera l’un des plus beaux héritages des Jeux olympiques et paralympiques de Paris 2024. pic.twitter.com/ZB9FIJYjh3
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) March 13, 2023
Making the Seine fit for swimming is an old Parisian dream. In 1988, former French president Jacques Chirac, then the city’s mayor, famously promised to make the river swimmable “in three years” – a pledge he never delivered on.
The dream has become a necessity now…
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