The Seine may determine athletes’ success at the Paris Olympics

“I was born on a boat,” says Jacky Delannoy, a 66-year-old captain, standing on the bridge of a container ship moored to the Paris dock. “My Mum couldn’t get ashore in time, so I was born aboard.” The fourth generation of bargemen in his family, Mr Delannoy is at the helm of a 135-metre-long container ship, longer than a football pitch. Part of a fleet belonging to Sogestran, a logistics firm, it journeys each day up and down the Seine between Paris and Le Havre, a port on the Atlantic coast. Heading downstream, the ship’s hotch-potch containers carry cars, cement, champagne, furniture, wine and more.

During the opening ceremony of the Olympic games on July 26th, the spectacle will require no manufactured decor; the athletes no unnatural parade route. The Seine will be the stage, Paris the enchanting backdrop. The river, winding its way 777km from a plateau in Burgundy (of which 13km flow through Paris), will carry national teams aboard a flotilla of boats—past bridges, monuments and cobbled quaysides that lend the French capital its charisma. Later hundreds of athletes will plunge into the river for both triathlon and swimming races.