Organisers claim they are confident the levels will improve, but are there alternatives to swimming in the Seine?
Training for the triathlon competition in the Paris Olympics has been postponed Monday for the second day in a row due to poor water quality of the Seine River, where the competition is set to take place.
The men’s triathlon is scheduled for Tuesday, while the women’s race is set for Wednesday.
Organisers insisted they were “confident” the triathlon events will take place as planned.
It’s a risky move as the presence of bacteria, particularly E. coli, typically spikes after heavy rains, like the ones that fell in Paris during the opening ceremony on Friday and Saturday.
Storms regularly overwhelm the city’s 19th-century sewer network, creating discharges of untreated effluent directly into the river.
About €1.4 billion has been spent trying to clean up the river ahead of the Olympics.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and France’s Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra took a dip in the river earlier this month to try to convince the public the Seine is clean enough for the athletes.
If things don’t improve, then what?
Local authorities said they’ll keep postponing the races until the water quality gets better.
However, stormy conditions are expected on Wednesday and Thursday, which could further aggravate the E. coli levels. E. coli can cause infection even when small amounts are ingested.
If that’s the case, plan C is that the triathlon will become a duathlon, meaning that triathletes will only participate in the sport’s cycling and running sections.
As for the marathon swimming events scheduled to take place in the Seine on 8-9 August, the city has another plan B — or rather, plan D — in place: if the Seine is too polluted, the marathon will take place in one of the nautical stadiums outside Paris.
One of them is the site of the canoeing and rowing competitions, and the triathlon could be potentially moved there.
