July 29, 2024, 10:22 AM
July 29, 2024, 10:22 AM
There will be no “familiarisation” of the Seine for the Olympic triathletes before the individual events: the rains that fell on Friday and Saturday in Paris made the river dirty and forced the cancellation of the training planned for Monday, for the second day in a row.
The same decision was made on Sunday, also due to water pollution, but the organisers say they remain “confident” that the planned events can be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, they said on Monday.
The Games Organising Committee, the International Triathlon Union and local authorities took “the decision to cancel the swimming part of the triathlon training” scheduled for Monday morning because “the quality levels of the water (…) do not offer sufficient guarantees,” they said in a statement.
The rates of faecal bacteria E.Coli and enterococci were not specified, and must be below a pre-established threshold for health reasons.
Urgent countdown
The triathlon is the first Olympic event to be held on the Seine, before open water swimming in the second week of the Games.
The men’s individual triathlon event is scheduled for Tuesday at 08:00 local time, before the women’s event on Wednesday at the same time.
If the schedule is maintained, there will be no prior recognition of the swimming route in the river, at a time when the flow of the Seine, swollen by recent rains, is three times its usual level for the local summer.
The familiarisation sessions for the athletics and cycling events will take place as planned on Monday, the organising committee and the International Triathlon Union said.
The organisations are confident that “water quality will be below the limits before the start of the triathlon competitions on 30 July (…) taking into account the weather forecasts for the next 36 hours.”
They said they hoped that with the current conditions of sunshine, high temperatures and prolonged absence of rain, the quality of the water in the Seine would “improve significantly.”
Authorities trust in the weather
Authorities have invested more than 1.4 billion euros ($1.52 billion at current exchange rates) since 2016 in creating a series of infrastructures to reduce pollution in the Seine and its tributary Marne, and thus allow bathing.
The sun has been shining in Paris since Sunday, which is why officials are optimistic about water pollution levels for Tuesday.
“Tomorrow (Tuesday), everything will be back to normal,” the mayor of the French capital, Anne Hidalgo, told France Bleu Paris radio on Monday.
A source from the Paris mayor’s office said that the results of the water analysis on Sunday were evolving “in a positive direction” compared to those of Saturday.
