Athletes jumped into the Seine on Wednesday for the Olympic women’s triathlon after tests showed lower levels of germs in the water. This ended days of uncertainty about whether the central Paris swim would be possible after heavy rains.
The men’s triathlon was supposed to happen on Tuesday, but it had to be moved to later Wednesday because tests turned up bad water in the river.
The women’s race started at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT), just as the rain that had been falling all night was ending.
The races going ahead will be good for the teams and athletes, as well as for the city of Paris, which has promised that the Seine will be swimmable for years to come as a memory of the Games. The triathlon will be a big test for everyone.
An official from France’s triathlon league, Benjamin Maze, told Reuters, “We are very happy to hear this news.” “Now that we know we will race, we can mentally switch fully into competition mode.”
Even though it rained overnight, the races on Wednesday went ahead as planned.
Paris 2024 says that the decision was made after organizers looked at samples of the river taken at 5 a.m. the previous day and talked with weather experts.
Around 5:45 a.m. on Wednesday, it started to rain again, which made racing harder on the bike stage, which has some sharp turns and a quarter of the route on cobblestones.
The triathlon was planned to be one of the main events of the Paris Olympics. It begins and ends at the Alexandre III bridge and goes along part of the Champs-Élysées, passing famous buildings like the Musee d’Orsay.
The competition began at 8 a.m. with 55 women from 34 countries. Two of the top gold medal hopefuls, France’s Cassandre Beaugrand and Britain’s Beth Potter jumped into the river together from a floating pontoon next to the bridge.
At 10:45 a.m., right after the women’s race, the men’s race will start.
“World Triathlon has determined that the latest water tests, which were received at 3:20 a.m., are compliant, which means that the triathlon competitions can go ahead,” Paris 2024 and World Triathlon said in a statement.
THE “PUPPET SHOW”
Paris has spent 1.4 billion euros ($1.52 billion) on wastewater infrastructure to keep sewage from spilling into the river. Earlier this month, Mayor Anne Hidalgo went for a swim to show people who were not sure that the water wouldn’t make them sick.
Some runners were angry that the men’s race had to be pushed back at the last minute on Tuesday.
Marten Van Riel from Belgium wrote on World Triathlon’s Instagram page, “If the athletes’ health were the most important thing, this event would have been moved to a different place a long time ago.”
“We are just puppets in a puppet show.”
It was always a risk that the river would be clean enough for the race because the quality of the water changes a lot from day to day. For example, when it rains, the amount of bacteria that cause infections like E. coli increases.
