The water quality in the Seine River remained a concern Monday as officials called off the swimming portion of an Olympic triathlon training session for a second straight day.
Event organizers overseeing the event at the Paris Games are optimistic that triathletes will be able to swim in the city’s famed waterway when the competition starts on Tuesday.
The sport’s governing body World Triathlon and its medical team, along with city officials, are banking on sunny weather and higher temperatures over the next 36 hours to improve the water quality and bring it below the necessary limits to stage the swim portion of a race that also includes biking and running.
World Triathlon decided to cancel the swim workout early Monday following a meeting over water quality. The representatives for Paris 2024 and triathlon’s international federation said tests conducted in the Seine on Sunday showed water quality levels leading into the training session that “did not provide sufficient guarantees to allow the event to be held.”
The delegation said this was due to the recent rain that impacted Friday’s opening ceremony.
Swimming in the Seine has been banned for over a century in large part because of the poor water quality. Organizers have invested 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) to prepare the river ahead of the Olympics. In addition to the swimming port of the triathlon Tuesday and Wednesday, the Seine will be used for the marathon swimming competitions on Aug. 8 and 9.
Daily water quality tests in early June indicated unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria, followed by recent improvements. Some of the measures put in place to improve the water quality include the construction of a giant basin to capture excess rainwater and keep wastewater from flowing into the river, renovating sewer infrastructure and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo went for a famous swim 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.
