“Swimming the Seine”: the feat of Arthur Germain-Hidalgo at the heart of a documentary


774 km and 312 hours of swimming in cold water to descend the Seine from its source in Burgundy to its estuary in Normandy. It is this crazy challenge that young Arthur Germain took up last summer at only 19 years old. The challenge launched by the son of Anne Hidalgo is at the heart of the documentary Swimming the Seine. At 16, he had already become the youngest swimmer to cross the English Channel. This time, he is the first to have attempted and succeeded in this feat in the Seine.

A feat in total autonomy

To add to this challenge, the athlete decided to remain completely independent. That is to say that he himself transported all his equipment and food in a kayak. “The hardest part was the first four days, when I had to walk pulling the 120 kilos of my kayak to reach the ‘swimmable’ Seine, because at the beginning the Seine is almost dry, it doesn’t there is almost no water”, he confides at the microphone of Europe 1.

“Besides, the first few days, I lost close to 5 kilos. Otherwise, the most difficult thing is to be isolated for 50 days. It’s still a lot”, continues Arthur Germain. “When you swim, you’re really in your bubble and you have time to ask yourself a lot of questions. Sometimes it’s not easy.” During these 50 days, a film crew filmed each stage of this crossing of the Seine to give birth to the documentary Swimming the Seine. Arthur Germain explains that the idea came to him 3 years ago, when he was still at university.

An equally ecological challenge

“I no longer recognized myself too much in today’s society. And I was beginning to develop an ecological awareness. One day, I decided to drop everything, to stop my studies in physics and philosophy, and to get involved in associations. environmental protection,” he said. “After a year in these associations, I wanted to carry my own message and use my physical and sporting abilities, and my taste for adventure to spread, in my own way, an ecological message.”

An ecological message very present in the documentary: we see the young athlete regularly taking samples to measure the indices of water pollution. Arthur Germain’s objective: to find solutions so that the Seine becomes a clean and “bathingable” river again.

Swimming the Seinethis film produced by Thematics Prod and 3e Oeil can be discovered now on the Explore channel, available on the Apple TV application.



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