After months of doubts about the quality of the Seine water and an embarrassing first postponement, the two events scheduled for this Wednesday, July 31 are taking place. Triathlete Cassandre Beaugrand walked on water this Wednesday, July 31 to offer France its sixth gold medal, where the suspense lasted until the end over the holding of the event due to the quality of the Seine water.
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Green light for the triathlon of JO 2024. Time was beginning to press. A final fallback date was planned for this Friday if the results of the latest bacteriological analyses were still inconclusive, but the threat was becoming more and more concrete.
After the cancellation on Sunday and Monday of two reconnaissance sessions of the swimming part and the last-minute postponement of the men’s race initially scheduled for Tuesday morning, the female triathletes entered the Seine this wednesday morningA relief for athletes, organizers and authorities alike.
” The stakeholders have confirmed that the women’s triathlon and the men’s triathlon will take place as planned. The results of the latest water analyses, received at 03:20, were deemed compliant “, announced the organizing committee and the international body World Triathlon in a press release on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday.
The women’s race started at 08:00 (06:00 UTC) at the Pont Alexandre III, in the heart of Paris. French triathlete Cassandre Beaugrand brought a sixth gold medal to France in this event. The men will start at 10:45 (08:45 UTC), from the same location.
The men’s race was scheduled for Tuesday, but was postponed for health reasonswith bacteria levels recorded at some points along the route still above acceptable limits. After heavy rains in the French capital on Friday and Saturday, the improvement in weather conditions since Sunday has led to an improvement in water quality.
The soap opera is not over yet, with other trials to come.
The triathlon was therefore not stripped of its swimming part and transformed into a duathlon (running, cycling, running), a last resort solution, extremely rare, which the main players did not want to hear about. There is no question of having a duathlon. It would not be a serious option. “, estimated the national technical director of the French Triathlon Federation Benjamin Maze on Tuesday. And that would not have favored the French competitors, good swimmers overall, who are counting on the 1,500 meters to cover in the Seine, before 40 kilometers of cycling and 10 kilometers of running, to gain the upper hand over their opponents.
The sport resumes on Wednesday after a stressful day for the male athletes, who learned of the cancellation of their race just hours before the start, while they were having breakfast in the early morning. If the priority was the health of the athletes then this race would have been transferred to another site a long time ago. We are just puppets “, had castigated on his social networks the Belgian Marten van Riel, fourth in Tokyo in 2021.
The smooth running of the triathlon events also reassures the organizers and local authorities, in particular the Paris city hall and the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region, which have been working for years on the Seine decontamination issue.
The State and the Paris region’s local authorities have invested a total of 1.4 billion euros to make the river and its main tributary, the Marne, swimmable, in preparation for the Olympic Games and for the general public afterwards. The saga is not quite over. A final triathlon event, the mixed relay, is to take place on Monday 5 August, before the open water swimming events.
Read also2024 Olympics: French triathlete Cassandre Beaugrand crowned champion in the first event in the Seine