The Mayor of Paris has been mocked online and likened to Gollum after swimming in the French capital’s notoriously polluted river in a bid to prove the waters are safe ahead of the Olympics.
Anne Hidalgo, 65, fulfilled her pledge of being one of the first to step into the grimy Seine following a massive £1.2billion cleanup operation that has made the river’s water quality safe enough to swim in for the first time in a century.
In front of a huge crowd, Hidalgo plunged in to the still-murky waters in what has been dubbed a ‘PR stunt’, but her swim has sparked a flurry of jokes and memes on social media, with one viral AI-generated image depicting the Paris Mayor as Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
The edited photo shared on X, formerly Twitter, shows Hidalgo as the wrinkled, alien-like fantasy character with grey skin, crooked teeth, and bulging eyes, emerging from the brown waters to speak to a BFM reporter.
Social media users were quick to join the chorus mocking the mayor for her dip with some suggesting she ‘gets her bloods done’, and others saying ‘lets check back in a day or two and see how this goes’.
Another viral meme of the moment showing a man covered in thick green slime emerging from a pit while smearing the mess from his face was captioned: ‘Anne Hidalgo dove into the Seine’.
A protest group posting under the hashtag #jechiedanslaSeine (#Is***intheSeine) had also encouraged people to empty their bowels in the river upstream.
The mayor’s dive attracted attention from onlookers – some of whom were cheering, while others watched on cautiously.
Some spoke to French newspaper Le Figaro about the experience with one slamming the moment: ‘A PR stunt when the country has other priorities’.
Another cautiously asked: ‘Won’t we have to wait for the medical checks?’ when quizzed on whether she would follow in Hidalgo’s footsteps.
‘I want to see what people are going to swallow while they swim. The weather is nice right now, it makes you want to go for it, for sure, but isn’t it just visual?,’ she said, before her husband peered over the edge of the quay and asked if the rats were still there.
‘I still have huge doubts about the decontamination,’ he admitted.
On Wednesday morning the mayor was pictured plunging into the river while leading a group of around 100 officials, athletes, and locals.
She arrived on foot at around 9:20am on the George Pompidou Way, alongside Pierre Rabadan, the Deputy for Sport and the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Donning a black and orange short-sleeved, knee-length swimsuit, she climbed down into the water beaming before beginning her much-anticipated swim.
Flanked by several boats, three of which were from the from the fire brigade, two from the police and one from civil protection, the mayor took to the cloudy waters and swam for just five minutes with triple Olympic champion Tony Estanguet.
‘It’s a dream day… and the sun is out. It’s sweet and wonderful and the result of a lot of work,’ she said following her dip.
Hidalgo had originally planned to swim last month, but just three weeks ago the Seine was declared unsuitable to host swimmers – despite the billion-pound project to make it safe.
The river is set to host part of the Olympics opening ceremony, the open-water swimming competition, and as swimming leg of the triathlon.
Parisians had threatened to defecate in the river in protest against the French government on June 23 but it is unclear if any such delinquencies were performed.
President Emmanuel Macron and Hidalgo both vowed that they would swim in the river to prove its safeness ahead of the games – but with just nine days to go, the mayor is the only one to have kept to her word so far.
Outrage around the water quality of the Seine has been bubbling for a considerable length of time.
In April a French water charity found ‘alarming levels of pollution’, sparking fears that the river would not be ready in time.
The Surfrider Foundation took 14 samples from the Seine over a six-month period and found the water to be potentially dangerous in all but one of their tests.
The measurements of E. coli and enterococci – bacteria which indicate the presence of faecal matter and which can cause serious illnesses – were found to be double and at times triple the maximum permitted amounts.
Sharing an open letter with its stakeholders, the charity stressed that they had ‘rising concerns about the quality of the Seine’ as well as ‘the risks faced by athletes moving in contaminated water’.
Additionally, last year, a swimming test event for the Olympics was scrapped after the water quality was found to be ‘below acceptable standards’.
But following Hidalgo’s swim, this is not the first time a politician has been spotted carrying out a bizarre performance in the hopes of making a point.
In May 1990, three years after Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) had been found in British cattle, the agricultural minister pulled a daring stunt to prove UK beef was safe to eat.
At a boat show, John Selwyn Gummer fed his four-year-old daughter Cordelia a British beef burger in front of the media.
Six years later a link between BSE and a human form of the disease – Mad Cow Disease – was officially confirmed in the commons.
After standing down as an MP, Gummer became a member of the House of Lords in 2010 and is now known as Lord Deben.
But commenting on the burger incident in the past, Lord Deben said: ‘I was prepared to eat it myself and I was prepared for my family to eat it because I believed it to be safe. All the evidence showed it was.’
The former agriculture minister has always denied he was aware of any risks from eating beef products and insisted he did nothing wrong.