From Olympic glory to community impact: Sevran will welcome Paris 2024 pool

28 July 2025 – In the heart of Seine-Saint-Denis, one of Paris’s youngest and most under-resourced departments where half of the 11-year-olds cannot swim, the legacy of Paris 2024 is set to benefit the local community. Sevran, a town long underserved in terms of sports infrastructure, has inherited one of the most symbolic legacies from the Games: a 50-metre Olympic swimming pool that exactly one year ago was home to world-class athletes, including French swimming sensation Léon Marchand.

This pool, originally installed in the iconic Paris La Défense Arena to host Olympic swimming and water polo events, was the site of Marchand’s historic performance, earning four gold medals and a bronze medal, and setting multiple Olympic records. In January 2026, it will open its doors to the public in Sevran, complementing the current 25-metre municipal pool that has long served the local community.

While the existing pool welcomes between 70,000 and 90,000 visitors annually, the new facility is expected to more than double attendance, reaching up to 200,000 visitors per year, with a particular focus on schoolchildren. With this expansion, the pool will be able to welcome students across six consecutive school years, from kindergarten to year five.

“The Dive”, a short film by the IOC, features Ali Dhifallah, director and swimming instructor at the local pool in Sevran. As someone who almost drowned as a child, he highlights how this Olympic legacy goes far beyond providing new facilities to teach children to swim. For him, it’s a tool for empowerment.

At the moment, in some parts of Sevran only about 42 per cent of children can swim. So the fact that we can offer classes for a six-year age range is huge. It’s unique and will enable us to be much more efficient.

Ali Dhifallah, Director and swimming instructor at the local pool in Sevran

“There are many children in Sevran who don’t go on holiday, and learning to swim will enable them to take part in water sports activities such as waterskiing and kayaking and out-of-town trips, which will help us reduce the gap in terms of access to these activities,” Dhifallah explains.

Once the new Olympic pool is in place, the current pool will be repurposed outdoors, providing open-air swimming in a newly developed green space. The upgraded aquatics centre, designed to accommodate up to 1,500 people, will also feature wellness facilities, including a sauna, hammam, jacuzzi, cold bath, massage jets and training equipment, creating a vibrant hub for the entire community. “During the Games, there was a Club 2024 where we could watch the Games on a giant screen in the centre of Sevran,” says Dhifallah. “Even people who knew nothing about swimming came to watch and asked me questions. Everyone identified with what would be Sevran’s new pool. It was magical.”

His transformation is part of a broader mission by Paris 2024 to make sport more accessible, particularly for young people in urban areas. More than 38,000 children have so far benefitted from free swimming lessons through 1,2,3 Swim!, a Paris 2024 initiative focused on addressing inequality in access to sport, and 30 minutes of daily physical activity are being introduced into French primary schools, as a result of an initiative supported by Paris 2024.