Small flop. The rains that fell on Friday and Saturday in Paris, especially during the opening ceremony, soiled the Seine for the next few hours, forcing the organizers to cancel the triathlon training scheduled for this Sunday, July 28 in the morning in the river. The triathlon is the first Olympic event that is to be held in the Seine, Tuesday and Wednesday, before the open water swimming in the second week of the Paris Olympics.
But on the night of Saturday to Sunday, the Olympic organizing committee, the International Triathlon Federation, and local authorities took the “joint decision to cancel the swimming part of the triathlon familiarization” scheduled for today, because the “water levels do not provide sufficient guarantees,” they said in a statement. On Saturday afternoon, the organizers had already warned that the previous day’s deluge, some 16 mm of water, was likely to degrade the quality of the water.
They did not specify this Sunday the rate of E. coli and enterococci bacteria which must be below a certain threshold, but put forward “the priority of the athletes’ health”. Before swimming on Tuesday and Wednesday, the triathletes have the opportunity to “familiarize” themselves with the river, even if some decide to continue training in the pool, notably in the legendary George Vallerey pool in the east of Paris where the athletes of the 1924 Olympic Games already swam. “The running and cycling events” for Sunday morning’s training “will take place as planned”, the organizers specified.
Confident for the coming days
Ten days after the bath of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who promised Parisians that they would be able to swim in the river next summer, the triathletes will therefore not be able to test the Seine as planned this morning. Due to heavy rain, the water in the Seine had been of poor quality for much of June, making it impossible to swim. On the other hand, water quality analyses were recently within health standards six days out of seven from July 17 to 23.
“Given the weather forecast for the next 48 hours, Paris 2024 and World Triathlon are confident that water quality will return to below limits before the start of triathlon competitions on July 30,” they assured.
On Saturday, a U.S. Triathlon Team official was confident. “We have a really good shot at doing the full triathlon,” said U.S. Triathlon Team High Performance Director Scott Schnitzspahn. “With close monitoring and watching how the system (the rainwater harvesting system that’s deployed) responds to the rainfall, we have a really good shot at doing the full triathlon,” he added.
The state and local authorities of the Paris region have injected 1.4 billion euros since 2016 to make the Seine and its main tributary, the Marne, swimmable. Modernization of treatment plants, connection of barges to the sewer system, collection of plastic waste… The plan has also given rise to five major works, including a rainwater and wastewater retention basin near the Gare d’Austerlitz, a veritable underground cathedral dug in the heart of Paris.