Martin Lange, edited by Gauthier Delomez / Photo credits: BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
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7:26 a.m., April 4, 2024
The final finishing touches a few hours before the inauguration. This Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron inaugurates the Olympic Aquatic Center (CAO), the only facility for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games built from the ground up for the event. Located in the north of Paris, opposite the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, it will host three disciplines: water polo, aquatic dance and diving.
The CAO is located opposite the Stade de France.
Europe 1 was able to visit this new aquatic center, which has two pools: one of 50 meters for the first two disciplines, and another of 17 meters overlooked by several diving boards.
A building with a wave-shaped roof
“You have the 1 meter springboards here, the 5 meter platforms, 10 meters, 7.50 meters and the 3 meter springboards”, lists Guillaume Benoit, the guide of the day. On the ceiling are around a hundred beams, 90 meters long, serving as a framework for a corrugated roof. A sort of wave opening onto the city.
© Paris 2024
The interior of the aquatic center.
“It was very important for us to have a building that makes you want to come,” says Laure Meriaud, one of the project’s architects. “You can walk past, put your head against the window and say, ‘Wow, that looks great! I’ll get a ticket,'” she says.
Opening to the general public in June 2025
After the Games, the aquatic center will indeed have a second life, underlines Patrick Ollier, the president of Grand Paris. “In the legacy, it will be used for swimming for families and for children,” he specifies, noting that in Seine-Saint-Denis, “one in two children who enter 6th grade do not know how to swim. It’s very important in the approach we took.” A learning pool was therefore designed, under the stands.
But interested future swimmers will have to wait a little longer to benefit from the work. The CAO will open its doors to the general public in June 2025. The entrance fee is already known: it will be 5 euros for an adult, and 3 euros for a child.