Paris racing to clean up the Seine River in time for Olympics
By Latika Bourke
London: Officials in Paris are forging ahead with plans to stage an international triathlon in the River Seine next week, despite a deluge rendering the water unsafe for competition.
The Seine will be used for the Olympic marathon swimming, the swimming leg of the triathlon and the para-triathlon at next year’s Olympic Games.
A crane is used to dismantle the starting line after last week’s cancellation of the Open Water Swimming World Cup on the Seine in Paris.Credit: Getty
Last weekend, a planned test event, the Open Water Swimming World Cup, was cancelled after heavy rain caused overflows of untreated water into the river.
Paris has experienced its heaviest rainfall in two decades. Test results from samples taken on Sunday showed the water was safe for swimming.
“With a year to go before the Games, the efforts to make the Seine swimmable, led by the state and the City of Paris, continue to significantly improve the quality of the water in the Seine,” Olympic Games Paris 2024 organisers said in a statement.
“Water quality will continue to be monitored carefully, in the confident expectation – based on the current weather forecast – that elite athletes will compete in the Seine later this month at the World Triathlon and Para Triathlon Test Event Paris scheduled for August 17-20.
A boat pulls out of the starting line in front of the Eiffel Tower after the cancellation of the Open Water Swimming World Cup on August 6.Credit: Getty Images
“Prior to and even during the recent rainy period in Paris, water quality in the Seine has regularly achieved the levels required for healthy public swimming, demonstrating the progress that continues to be made.”
Swimming in the Seine has been banned since 1923 because of pollution.
But the city wants to permanently restore swimming in the central waterway as a part of its €1.4 billion ($2.3 billion) ambition to overhaul and clean it up in time for the Games.
Some public swimming has already begun.
Last month, swimmers entered the Seine at the Bras Marie, which is one of the three sites earmarked for public swimming from 2025.
A huge storage basin capable of holding the equivalent of twenty Olympic-sized swimming pools is being built in the suburb of Austerlitz. When erected, it is hoped the 30-metre-deep and 50-metre-wide cylinder will prevent wastewater from overflowing into the Seine.
The risks of competing in polluted water was underlined in Britain when 57 athletes became ill with diarrhoea after swimming in Sunderland’s Roker Beach during the World Triathlon Championship series in late July.
Australia’s Jake Birtwhistle said he had been feeling rubbish ever since he finished the race.
“I guess that’s what you get when you swim in shit,” he said on Instagram.
“[There are] some positives to take away leading into Paris in two weeks but the swim should have been cancelled.”
British Triathlon said the water quality passed tests taken before the event.
“Since Monday 31 July, British Triathlon has been working closely with Sunderland City Council and UK Health Security Agency to seek further information and investigate the cause of the illness,” the organisation said in a statement.
Britain’s water companies discharged raw sewage into the country’s waterways and sea an average 825 times a day in 2022.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.