London | Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has made good on a promise to take a dip in the French capital’s river Seine before the Olympics, hoping to prove it is safe enough to host marathon swimming and the triathlon.

Doubts have swirled over whether a €1.4 billion ($2.3 billion) clean-up had done the trick on the chronically polluted waterway. This had prompted fears that events which were meant to showcase Paris’s beauty would instead highlight its shortcomings.