The rains that fell on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 July in Paris soiled the Seine for the next few hours, forcing the organisers to cancel the triathlon training planned for Sunday morning in the river. However, they say that ” confident ” on the holding of the events on Tuesday and Wednesday. The triathlon is the first Olympic event to be held in the Seine, before open water swimming in the second week of the Paris Olympics.
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On the night of Saturday to Sunday, the Olympic organizing committee, the international triathlon federation, as well as local authorities, took the ” Joint decision to cancel the swimming part of the triathlon familiarization » scheduled for Sunday, 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 on Sunday. the rate of E.coli and enterococci bacteria which must be below a certain threshold, but have highlighted ” Athletes’ health priority “.
Asked by AFP, the deputy mayor of Paris for the Olympic Games and the Seine, Pierre Rabadan, indicated that the ” exceeding ” thresholds was not ” Very important “The Austerlitz basin, a major structure of the bathing plan which receives rainwater and wastewater to prevent it from being discharged into the Seine, ” worked at about 20 % of its maximum capacity “, he also indicated.
Thanks to the swimming plan, for which the State and the Ile-de-France communities have injected 1.4 billion euros since 2016, “ There were spills in the Seine and Marne, but they were limited “, added Prefect Pierre-Antoine Molina. 15 to 20 mm on Friday and 10 mm more on Saturday, that’s the equivalent of about 15 days of precipitation in a normal July. “, stressed this representative of the regional prefecture. The time needed to return to acceptable levels” depends on many parameters ” but ” an improvement will occur in the next few days ” he assured.
Read also2024 Olympics: Swimming in the Seine, a battle far from being won yet
Paris 2024 confident for the start of competitions on July 30
For their part, Paris 2024 and World Triathlon said: confident that water quality will return below limits before the start of triathlon competitions on July 30 “, And this “ taking into account the weather forecast for the next 48 hours “. ” We are not particularly worried. “, reacted Sunday morning the president of the organizing committee Tony Estanguet questioned from the riding site in Versailles. ” We have until Friday to organize, so we have a few days of leeway. “, he added.
Due to heavy rains, the water in the Seine had been of poor quality for much of June, making it unsuitable for swimming. However, water quality analyses were recently within health standards six days out of seven from July 17 to 23.
The Seine was unfit for swimming the day Anne Hidalgo went swimming
On July 17, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgowho promised Parisians they could swim in the river next summer, and the president of the organizing committee Tony Estanguet had gone swimming to set an example. The results of water analyses released Friday showed that on that day, the E.coli level was close to the international federations’ threshold for competitions, but exceeded that for swimming by the general public.
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