Unveiling the Aquatics Centre at the beginning of April, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, heaped paeans upon the teams that had worked on the 170 million-euro building to ready it in time for the Olympics. Equally crucial, he insisted, the future.
That Olympic legacy unfurls a swimming pool into a deprived region where surveys have shown that only around 40 percent of the under-11s know how to swim. National and international competitions will also be staged at the venue just a sleek footbridge away from the Stade de France.
Nearly four months on from the presidential effusions, one of the two pools, around which an environmentally friendly array of woods and photovoltaic panelling have been arranged, hosted the women's synchronized 10-meter platform event.
The competition that began at 11am was soon a battle for the lesser precious metals as the Chinese teenage duo Yuxi Chen and Hongchan Quan eased into ascendancy.
Their first turn - a back dive - with 2.0 of difficulty brought 56.40 points.
The Canadian pair of Caeli McKay and Kate Miller were the nearest with 49.20 points.
Supremacy
The second a reverse dive in the pike position - with 2.0 difficulty - harvested 54.60 points. They enjoyed a lead of nearly 14 points over the British pair Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix and Lois Toulson.
After that, it was the severn other places that changed hands.
Chen, 18, and Quan, 17, were salient in their supremacy, drawing from an altogether different pool of talent.
By the time the North Korean pair of Jin Mi Jo and Mi Rae Kim claimed second place on the fifth of their six dives, the Chinese were 38.40 points ahead.
Not so much a coronation but an annihilation.
"We really wanted to give gold to our country," said Kim after collecting the country's first medal in the diving.
"But the performance was not done as we expected so we regret that. The next time we do it we will try hard for the gold.”
Spendolini-Sirieix and Toulson claimed bronze with 304.38 points. They were 11 points off the North Koreans' silver medal and nearly 55 off the golden ones.
Change
Diving done, the second pool at the Aquatics Centre took pride of place for two games in the group stages of the women's water polo.
Though water polo has been an Olympic sport since 1900, the women's event was only introduced in 2000 - another highlight of the gender disparities the International Olympic Committee has permitted since it was set up in 1894.
Fittingly, as male and female triathletes took to the river Seine at Pont Alexandre III on Wednesday morning for the first leg of the triathlon, the 1900 water polo event was played at Asnières further upsrteam as the river heads up to Normandy.
And what a gentlemanly affair it was.
Eight teams from four European countries entered the event. The chaps at the Osborne Swimming Club of Manchester beat the old beams from the Brussels Swimming and Water Polo Club of Belgium. The two teams from French clubs who lost in the semi-finals shared the bronze medal.
One hundred and 24 years later, 12 men's squads and 10 women's teams from different countries are competing for the water polo crowns.
"It's good to see the people from all over the world in the stands," said Jos Van Schepen freshly arrived at the Aquatics Centre from central Paris where he had been watching snatches of the men's triathlon with fellow Dutchman Jelmer Talsma.
Following the Group A women's water polo game between the Netherlands and Australia, the pair planned to sightsee and take in a handball tie between the Netherlands and Brazil as well as a volleyball match between China and France before returning home to Sneek.
Van Schepen, 33, a self-confessed sports junky, added: "I was playing football from the age of seven but I had to give up recently - too many injuries - but now I go running, cycle and play padel.
"When the Olympics are on TV, I was watching everything."
The pair will be back in the Netherlands when their country's women's water polo players contest their final game against Canada with the hope of reaching the last eight in their quest to claim a second crown and prevent a fourth consecutive title for the Americans.
"I've spent around 350 euros on the tickets," added Van Schepen.
And settling into his recycled plastic seat, he beamed: "And there have been no regrets."
