The Olympic Games hit close to home

In fact, after the excitement of the Olympics fades, champions of the Seine will face the same challenges to making the river truly swimmable for everyone as those of the Anacostia: identifying and reducing the remaining sources of sewage pollution, convincing an understandably wary populace that the long-polluted river is indeed safe (which includes providing instruction for safe open-water recreation), and establishing the physical and administrative infrastructure necessary for secure, accessible swimming.

Though there is still much to be done, both Paris and D.C. have made tremendous progress in cleaning up their hometown rivers. The day is not far off when more than just Olympic athletes will be swimming in the shadows of the Eiffel Tower and the U.S. Capitol.

Christopher E. Williams, Cheverly

The writer is president and CEO of the Anacostia Watershed Society.

Readers of The Post saw the July 18 news article “In Seine, Paris’s mayor takes a dip to prove it’s safe.” We at the Potomac Riverkeeper Network took note that the mayor of Paris swam to show that the river is safe. The story could have been about the Potomac in D.C.

As with the Seine, after a rainfall, sewage flows into the Potomac through inadequate and antiquated combined sewage and stormwater systems. Paris spent $1.5 billion to make the river swimmable by 2024. The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority is required by a 2005 consent decree to reduce its volume of combined sewer overflows into D.C. waters by an average of 96 percent by 2030. The estimated cost of those investments is $2.6 billion.

D.C. imposed a ban on swimming in the Potomac in 1971. Before the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, the Potomac was filled with untreated sewage on a daily basis. Today, an absolute swim ban in D.C. is neither desirable nor necessary. For several years, we at the Potomac Riverkeeper Network have conducted weekly water sampling of the Potomac from May through September — now at 30 sites. The results, which we post on Swim Guide once a week, have demonstrated that the water is frequently safe for human contact, and, at some sites, the water quality meets public health standards more than 90 percent of the time. In short, with proper monitoring and public communication, there are river reaches that can be enjoyed today.

Unfortunately, swimming in the Potomac River in D.C. is still only available to those who can access the river by boat. There are no public access points for diving or wading into the river, prohibiting many Washingtonians from the pleasure of swimming in a river that rightfully belongs to everyone.

I believe everyone should have the right to swim in the Nation’s River. The Potomac Riverkeeper Network is actively working to open D.C. waters for swimming and to create public beaches — with water quality that supports safe swimming.

Paris made a dramatic commitment to improving the Seine to support safe swimming. D.C. should do the same.

Randy Benn, Washington

The writer is chair of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network.

Experiencing Paris through the paper

Kudos to The Post’s sportswriters for their glowing coverage of the Olympics. Already, Sally Jenkins offered a literary gem about the surfers in Tahiti challenging a man-eating wave; Dave Sheinin gave an insightful piece on Katie Ledecky’s apparent successor, Canada’s Summer McIntosh; and Barry Svrluga added his moving tribute to those of Rafael Nadal’s cheering Paris fans.

I don’t know how many of these and The Post’s other writers are actually at the Games, but their stories leave us feeling as though we were there.

Steve Fahey, Olney

A gendered gymnastics double-standard

I believe that the Olympic Games are so popular because they offer opportunities to better understand, or sometimes even discover, sports that are different to the ones that we would usually indulge in. In my case, thanks to the Games, instead of my usual basketball game, I found myself watching both the men’s and women’s floor-exercise competitions, despite never having been particularly interested in gymnastics.

As someone unfamiliar with this discipline, I was immediately struck by a difference. Men performed their routines without musical accompaniment, focusing exclusively on athletic elements and showcasing strength and body control. In contrast, the women’s performances were set to music and enriched with choreographic movements, including more sensual elements. All this while they maintained dazzling smiles.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the regulations and also discussed them with a former gymnast friend. I discovered that the difference that appalled me was obvious to those familiar with the sport and treated with a certain nonchalance. The same discipline is indeed interpreted completely differently in the men’s and women’s categories. Hence, the differences in the execution of the routines.

I am certainly not qualified to comment on the appropriateness or logic of adapting the rules of a discipline, especially one that I’m unfamiliar with, based on sex, so I simply ask: What would happen if such differences pervaded other sports? What if, for example, basketball regulations required female players to be always graceful and smiling while dribbling or shooting? Wouldn’t that be considered sexist?

How can we complain that the typical compliment for a little girl is “How pretty!” while we say to her brother “How good!” when we ourselves, perhaps without even realizing it, continue to reward men for displaying strength, seriousness and determination and women remain relegated to the stereotype of being graceful, smiling and seductive?

Francesco Ramponi, Cambridge, Mass.

Hats off to Ms. Biles

After she and the rest of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team won gold in the team final at the Paris Games, Simone Biles now has more Olympic medals than any other U.S. gymnast. She has 11 medals in three Games, breaking a tie with Shannon Miller. She already held the most gold medals by a U.S. gymnast, having won four at the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. I think Ms. Biles is not only the greatest U.S. Olympian of all time, but also the greatest Olympian of all time. Congratulations, Ms. Biles!

Paul Bacon, Hallandale Beach, Fla.

The gold-winning U.S. women’s gymnastics team brings glory to the United States. These incredibly talented and dedicated young women feature on practically every front page of newspapers and appear in breaking-news coverage on television.

They are the DEI face of the real United States, as is Vice President Kamala Harris. They follow in the footsteps of Jesse Owens, who trounced his Nazi-supported opponents at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Diversity, equity and inclusion needs to become our national motto. That is our path to not just Olympic gold but to world recognition for excellence.

Anca Vlaspolos, Centerville, Mass.

When Simone Biles made the decision to step away from the Tokyo Games in 2021, JD Vance criticized the “therapeutic society” that praises people “not for moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments.” Such comments represent the Republican Party’s game plan: stoking the darkest feelings of hatred and resentment in the human psyche and glorifying them.

Most of us are awed by Ms. Biles’s gold-medal achievements, by her sportsmanship and teamwork, and we are grateful for the esteem the United States and the sport of artistic gymnastics have gained through her efforts.

Three years ago, Ms. Biles dropped out of the Tokyo Olympics because of what I interpreted as a neurological short-circuit that would not only have impaired her performance but could have endangered her health, or even her life, if she had continued. I sympathized with her reasoning and understood she was defying some macho values, which were not applicable to gymnastics in any case. That did not stop Mr. Vance. Following Donald Trump’s example, he believes that lies and insults gain more votes among some followers than a minute of thinking — thinking that would reveal the faults in his failed propaganda.

Juliette Muscat, Haymarket