A swimming pool that looks like an “architectural and ecological feat” for the Elysée, despite the hiccups of online swimming events. This Thursday, Emmanuel Macron inaugurates the Olympic aquatic center in Saint-Denis, which will notably host the synchronized swimming, diving and water polo events during the Olympics.
With “the largest concave wooden frame in the world”, this “showcase of French know-how” makes it possible “to reduce the building’s energy consumption by 30%”, explained to the press an advisor to the head of the State, who will meet workers who participated in its construction.
Basins “which can be passed on to residents”
In addition, it is the only permanent site built for next summer’s Olympic Games, to which we can add the Arena Porte de la Chapelle, an old project financed thanks to the Games. This will therefore be an important legacy for Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest department in France where one in two students does not know how to swim when entering sixth grade, according to the public authorities.
“Thanks to the Games and the two swimming pool plans initiated with the department, 18 new pools out of ten swimming pools have been built or renovated, which can be passed on to residents,” according to the presidency. After inaugurating the “athletes’ village” at the end of February, also in this suburb north of the capital, Emmanuel Macron is ramping up the preparations.
Line swimming will be in Nanterre
The birth of the aquatic center, for a total amount of 188 million euros including the footbridge which spans the A1 motorway to connect it to the Stade de France, was not without its ups and downs.
The Elysée is delighted today with a site “delivered a month in advance” and a budget “in line” with that which was set in 2020. But in the application file, the Olympic swimming pool was to cost less than 70 million euros, a cost refined to 90 million euros in the final project submitted in September 2017.
A forecast envelope which then exploded and forced the organizers to rework their project in 2020: the Olympic Aquatic Center (CAO) and its 5,000 places will therefore not accommodate in-line swimming, one of the three key sports of the Games, with athletics and gymnastics.
The swimming races will take place at the Arena La Défense, in Nanterre, with two temporary pools which, at the end of the Games, will be installed in two other towns in Seine-Saint-Denis (Sevran and Bagnolet).