Receive free Paris Olympics updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Paris Olympics news every morning.
The Paris Olympics organisers have vowed to redouble efforts to clean up the Seine river after several test events were cancelled this weekend because of pollution, raising doubts over swimming plans for next summer’s games.
Athletes in the World Triathlon Olympic Games test event swam in the Seine on Thursday and Friday, but competitions scheduled for Saturday and Sunday were scrapped because water quality tests showed “significant discrepancies”, including higher than acceptable levels of E. coli bacteria, according to organisers. Instead of complete triathlons, the athletes did a duathlon of running and biking.
The decision was another setback to the city’s ambitions to reopen the Seine river to host two long-distance races and the swimming legs of the triathlon for the summer Olympics next year.
To prepare, Paris has embarked on a major clean-up and infrastructure upgrade that will cost €1.4bn, which includes new underground pipes, tanks and pumps to prevent sewage and pollutants from overflowing into the river when it rains heavily.
Tony Estanguet, the president of the Paris 2024 organising committee, told RMC radio on Sunday that “excellent improvements” to the river water quality had already been made and would continue “month by month”. “We are quite calm about next year,” he said.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has also backed the effort to make the Seine swimmable again as a key legacy of the Olympics that will benefit city residents as summer temperatures rise because of climate change.
In early July, she announced the first three swimming sites scheduled to be opened to the public in 2025, and the goal is to eventually have about 20 sites in the Paris region and its suburbs. “It is a dream that will become reality for Parisiens,” she said at the time.
City officials were not able to immediately identify the reasons for the poor water quality on Saturday, and it had not rained much in the area in recent days. In early August, another test event was cancelled because heavy rains caused overflows of untreated waste in to the river.
The concentration of E. coli bacteria in the water on Saturday was found to be slightly above the allowed levels, said an official from the Paris mayor’s office.
Incidents of athletes falling ill after swimming in polluted water have marred recent triathlons. According to UK health officials, 88 people who took part in a British triathlon even in Sunderland in late July reported experiencing diarrhoea or vomiting after the event.
Estanguet, who won three gold medals in canoe slalom competitions, said much had been learned during the test events last week in Paris, even though some had to be cancelled. “We still have a year and during the games we can reschedule the events if needed,” he said on RMC radio.
Read the full article here
