Moving the men’s triathlon to Wednesday means there will be two triathlons that day — if the water is determined to be clean enough. The women’s triathlon is scheduled to start at 8 a.m. here and the men’s at 10:45 a.m.
Paris and several surrounding municipalities have spent a total of 1.4 billion euros on a massive river cleaning project that has been viewed with skepticism from many in France, given that swimming in the Seine has been considered unsafe for close to 100 years. Politicians and Paris 2024 executives have talked repeatedly about how a clean Seine will be these Olympics’ greatest legacy, from the open-air Opening Ceremonies to outdoor swimming races including the triathlon. The city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, recently dived into the river to prove its cleanliness. France President Emmanuel Macron has promised to do so as well.
But cleaning the Seine to competitive swimming standards has proven tricky. While French officials say the project has had success, one of the biggest challenges has been Paris’s antiquated sewer system, which carries not only wastewater but also street runoff after rainstorms. After heavy rains, the runoff can overwhelm the sewer, pushing waste into the river.
A centerpiece of the project is a nine-story water storage tank that has been built on the river’s left bank near the Gare Austerlitz. The tank was finished earlier this year and went online only weeks before the Olympics.
After Paris said pollution levels were at an acceptable level for several days before the Games started, the rainstorms that marred last Friday’s Opening Ceremonies and canceled some events the next day raised the pollution levels, forcing cancellations of triathlon swim trainings Sunday and Monday.
Aurelie Merle, Paris 2024 executive director of sports, said the city got roughly .98 inches of rain over the weekend.
World Triathlon requires E. coli levels to be below 1,000 colony forming units (UFC) per 1,000 ml. Merle said one reading taken in a test in the Seine on Monday showed a reading of 980 UFC. Two other tests had numbers just over 1,000 and one was much higher at 1,530. World Triathlon usually uses readings from 24 hours before a competition to make a decision.
Merle said more than a year’s worth of data shows that the sun and heat “have a very strong [positive] impact on the water quality. Tuesday is supposed to be the hottest day of the Olympics with temperatures climbing into the upper 90s.
“That’s why we feel — also because we were so close [on levels] that tomorrow morning the levels will be low enough,” she said.
Despite Tuesday’s heat, there is a possibility of thunderstorms late Tuesday night and rain forecast for Wednesday and Thursday.
If Wednesday’s triathlons are postponed, Paris 2024 leaders are considering moving them to Friday. Three more open-water swimming events are scheduled for next week, including the mixed triathlon and the men’s and women’s 10k swim races. Paris 2024 executives have said that their worst-case scenario would be to cancel the swim portion of the triathlons, making them duathlons.
Last year, the Madrid European Championships were turned from a triathlon to a duathlon.
“We are living in the 21st century where unfortunately there are far too many meteorological events that are beyond [event] organizers,” Merle said.
Late last week, triathletes were trying to take a relaxed approach to the possibility of swimming in unhealthy water. American Seth Rider joked in a news conference about strengthening his “E. coli threshold by exposing myself to a bit of E. coli in your day-to-day life.”
Added fellow U.S. triathlete Taylor Spivey: “I think we’ve all been upping our probiotic intake, which I think is the best way to assure that we have a strong gut and we can withstand any sort of sickness that might come our way. We’re hoping that there aren’t any crazy rainstorms before.”
