It was September 2018, a thousand years ago. The late Gérard Collomb, then Minister of the Interior, spoke of the arrogance of the President of the Republic. “In Greek, there is a word called hubrisit is the curse of the gods. When, at a certain point, you become too sure of yourself, you think that you will take everything,” he said. In mythology, Minos, king of Crete, feels so invulnerable that he tries to trick Poseidon by sparing a magnificent white bull promised to be sacrificed. The god of the seas takes revenge by animating the animal with fury, he devastates Crete and then gives birth to the Minotaur.
The moral – never challenge someone stronger than you are – could perfectly apply to the triathlon event at the Olympic Games. With, at the end of the pride, the specter of a fiasco in front of the whole world. The kilometer and a half of swimming that opens the event, before 40 kilometers of cycling and 10 kilometers of running, was to be swum in the Seine, this Tuesday, July 30. However, on the morning of the start, the Parisian river is too polluted for the race to take place. A new test will be carried out this Wednesday, July 31… but storms are expected in Paris during the night. Exactly the disaster scenario feared by the organizers.
Marc Guillaume, the prefect of Ile-de-France, detailed it to us on Tuesday, July 23: the worst-case scenario is based on storms a few days before the race. It rained heavily on Friday, July 26, as more than a billion viewers were able to see when watching the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The prefecture invested some 700 million euros on behalf of the State to make the Seine swimmable, by considerably improving the sanitation circuit for the water discharged into the river. But storage capacities are exceeded in the event of bad weather. A new storm between this Tuesday and this Friday, the date of the last “window of opportunity” to organize the men’s and women’s events, should be fatal to the holding of the triathlon.
The risk of duathlon
A plan B has been planned for the open water swimming event, also scheduled in the Seine, on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 August: if the river is too polluted, the athletes will go to the Vaires-sur-Marne water sports stadium, where the canoe-kayak and rowing events are already taking place. There is no such thing for the triathlon: because a route would also have had to be planned for the bike and the run, no backup plan has been organised. The triathlon will simply be replaced by a “duathlon”, and swimming is out.
An incredible lack of respect for the athletes, who have been training for three years for this Olympiad. Especially since the race would be partly rigged, since some champions are particularly comfortable in swimming while others have cycling as their specialty. And the French, we learned, are precisely formidable swimmers… It would also be a sad first: the case of an Olympic event being skipped has never happened, in the memory of an athlete.
Hidalgo’s Dream
To understand this hubrisand its unfortunate consequences, we must return to the genesis of the triathlon on the Seine. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, has made it her hobbyhorse since 2015, from the beginnings of the French candidacy. “If we organize the Olympic Games, the triathlon event will take place in the Seine”, she tweeted on July 8, 2015. At the time, the city councilor’s bet was considered crazy. “We still need to work on the quality of water in Paris”, the elected official also specified. The investment to be expected is colossal, the river is hyper-polluted. In 2016, a “water quality and swimming” steering committee was launched, with the Paris city hall and the State. The triathlon in the Seine is integrated into the Olympic program proposed by Tony Estanguet and his services.
Emmanuel Macron continued the “swimming plan” from 2017, then made an optimistic statement on March 13, 2023: “Making the Seine and Marne swimmable. That’s our goal for 2024. 1.4 billion euros invested, half of which by the State. With 500 days to go, we are on track to succeed in what will be one of the finest legacies of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.” He also sees this project as a symbol of French audacity. And what an achievement it would be, it’s true, if it were successful!
Canal de l’Ourcq not available
And so the countdown continues, with no fallback solution. There is indeed a Paris triathlon, organized in the Canal de l’Ourcq and then in the Parc de la Villette, but the venue is not available for the Olympic Games; it hosts the Parc des Nations, that is to say the committees of several countries, including France.
So what? We can only hope that the elements will leave French audacity alone in the coming hours. Otherwise, we will have to accept that history is only a restart since Minos: men cannot promise what implies a superior force, the gods, rain or good weather.
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