Olympics: pre-triathalon event canceled over water quality concerns

PARIS, France –

A 2024 Olympics pre-race triathlon event planned for Paris’ Seine River was cancelled Sunday as concerns persist over water quality.

Organizers said they nixed the swimming leg of the triathlon familiarization scheduled for Sunday after a meeting about water quality among authorities tasked with carrying out tests. That included representatives of World Triathlon, as well as city and regional authorities.

Swimming in the Seine has been banned for over a century in big part due to poor water quality. Organizers have invested US$1.5 billion to prepare the Seine for these Games, and the government has said the river would be clean enough to hold events, including the swimming portion of the triathlon and the marathon swimming event.

Daily water quality tests in early June indicated unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria, followed by recent improvements. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a famous dip in the river less than two weeks before Olympic events were set to start, fulfilling a promise to show that the long-polluted waterway was clean enough to host swimming competitions.

Heavy rain during the opening ceremony revived concerns over whether the Seine will be clean enough to host swimmers because water quality is deeply linked with the weather in the French capital.

Since 2015, organizers have invested heavily to prepare the Seine for the Olympics and to ensure Parisians have a cleaner river after the Games. The plan included constructing a giant underground water storage basin in central Paris, renovating sewer infrastructure and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.

Triathletes have expressed hope that the water would be clean enough for them to swim in.

“Hopefully we get to swim, bike and run because I don’t swim this much to just run and bike,” American triathlete Taylor Spivey said at a news conference Saturday.