Around 4,200 take part in the Christmas swim in Geneva.
Keystone-SDA
For the traditional Geneva Christmas Swim, the Coupe de Noël, this weekend, around 4,200 swimmers will take to the lake, which is almost 9°C. The first 3,700 participants, those from the Courses populaires, started on Saturday.
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For the first time, Olympic swimmers will be taking part in the canton’s oldest sporting event, the 87th Coupe de Noël de Genève. Charlotte Bonnet and Jeremy Desplanches are the patrons of this edition and will be taking part themselves on Sunday.
On Saturday Lake Geneva had a temperature of 8.71°C. On the shores of the English Garden, the participants swam in waves of around 25 people, some of them in original and scuba-safe costumes. Some swam the prescribed 100 metres dressed as mushrooms, turkeys or pirates.
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The Geneva Christmas Swim was introduced in 1934 and was declared part of Switzerland’s intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2023.
Adapted from German by AI/ts
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