Taking the Plunge at Porte des Lilas

The Piscine Georges Vallerey featured in the 1924 Olympic Games (Photo: Chabe01, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Tara Warrington recounts her eventful visit to an Olympic swimming pool in Paris, full of stringent rules, newfound enemies and underwater cyclists

I step into the metro carriage. It is quiet, as expected on a cold November afternoon. I ride the line 11 almost all the way to the ring road surrounding the city, which squeezes its 2.1 million inhabitants into a space suited for half that number. The metro line is faster than those I’m used to; the carriage sways uncertainly, as if it could topple at any moment. There’s a woman sitting opposite eating chicken wings from a grease-stained bag and the man perched next to me is watching an American sitcom with French subtitles, smiling slightly at his large phone screen. 

At Porte des Lilas station, I exit the underground network and emerge into the biting November air. Ill-prepared for this sudden cold following an unseasonably warm October, I hurry to my destination: a swimming pool just five minute’s walk away; the largest I’ve ever visited and the one used for the 1924 Olympics. To emphasise this, a huge set of Olympic Rings adorn the building. Their size and grandeur are testament to the city's pride that the Games came to Paris both earlier this year and an entire century before. 

Ahead of me in the queue is a woman who looks around five years older than me, kitted out with a large rucksack, hiking boots and a bandana. Reaching the front desk, she asks for a reduced ticket, claiming that her eligibility is twofold: she is both under 26 and a demandeuse d'emploi – a job seeker. I mimic the young woman's phrasing when requesting my own reduced ticket, smiling at the stern-faced man behind the desk and stumbling slightly over my nervous French. But the ticket is acquired and the swimming adventure underway. Onwards and upwards into the changing rooms I go. 

The smell of chlorine is intoxicating and I change quickly into my navy-and-white striped costume, an item decidedly more suited for lounging on the beach than treading the same water as Olympic heroes of the past. The label is intent on sticking out the back, no matter how many times I tuck it in. Begrudgingly, I wrestle on my luminous pink swimming cap – a requirement in most French pools. Other rules include: no running, no smoking, no loose shorts (“clinging swimming trunks” only) and no burkinis. 

The pool is massive and very busy. There are six lanes: two for front crawl, two for all strokes and two for using equipment. I see an old man with flippers and a snorkelling mask slowly make his way down the farthest lane; closer to me, two women are – impressively – conducting a conversation in rapid French while treading water in the deep end. 

One section is cordoned off for the most intense aquaerobics class I’ve ever seen. There are around 20 rudimentary exercise bikes submerged under water and the riders (mostly middle-aged women) have their feet strapped in and are pedalling enthusiastically. Loud American pop music plays from a speaker so the instructor has to shout to be heard by his devotees: “Gardez un tronc solide et un dos droit. Allez, il ne reste que 30 secondes!” (Keep your core strong and your back straight. Come on, there's only 30 seconds left!) As I walk past, he smiles at me, as if acknowledging the absurdity of the gaggle of half-submerged cyclists before us. 

I swim and I swim and the only stress I face is choosing the least awkward moment to overtake fellow swimmers. There’s a man in my lane who has clearly marked me as an enemy – he consistently waits at the end of the pool until the second I arrive, then sets off at a spitefully slow pace. The two women I saw chatting appear to be alternating between a very animated conversation about their friends and four very fast lengths of front crawl. 

The pool is splashy and noisy but still an atmosphere of calm persists. There is absurdity to the whole enterprise, not just the underwater Peloton class; this large, chlorinated bathtub, in which 30 odd strangers are swimming the same length of water over and over, seems to foster both a temporary sense of community and an opportunity for total anonymity.

The roof, which retracts in the summer to give swimmers an unobstructed view of the sky, lets through traces of winter sunlight. I find that, if you look at just the right time, you can catch the water sparkling ever so slightly golden, so faintly you might think you imagined it.