Host city Paris readies River Seine for grand opening ceremony, open-water swimming for 2024 Olympics

A giant water storage facility designed to keep the Seine river clean is nearing completion just in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Making the Seine River swimmable was a key part of Paris' bid to host the Olympics.

The Olympic deadline has supercharged a cleanup that has been decades in the making.

Without the imperative of having to be ready for 10,500 Olympians in July and August next year, followed by 4,400 Paralympians, City Hall officials say it would have taken many more years to fund the multi-pronged, 1.4-billion euro ($1.5 billion) effort.

As well as hosting outdoor swim races, the Seine is going to be the centrepiece of Paris' unprecedented Olympic opening ceremony.

For the first time, it will take place not in a stadium setting but along the river and its banks.

City Hall says samples taken daily last July and August in the stretch of river where Olympians and Paralympians will compete showed the water quality was overwhelmingly “good." By their sports' standards, that means acceptable.

Setting off from the Seine's ornate Alexandre III bridge, triathletes will race first in 2024, with men on July 30th, followed by women the next day.

After the games, the river should then reopen to everyone — in the summer of 2025.