Olympic Games triathlon: River Seine LATEST as NEW water quality test results provide yet more WORRYING news

Fears over the possibility of Olympic Games triathlons turning into duathlons next month remain very much alive after the latest River Seine water quality tests were released on Friday (June 28).

A huge 1.4bn (£1.18bn or $1.5bn) has so far been spent on a massive cleanup operation aimed at making the iconic Parisian waterway swimmable for the first time in a century.

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are supposed to be a spectacle to showcase that project – with both individual triathlon events (July 30 and 31) and the Mixed Relay (August 5) scheduled to include swims in the Seine.

Tests released last week though (for the week between June 10 and 16) showed the presence of two kinds of fecal bacteria, including E. coli. The results showed the levels of E. coli were too high to allow swimming at four different locations on the river.

The latest test results, revealed on Friday, give insight into samples taken between June 17 and 23. And again they provided more worrying questions than answers for triathletes and fans who fear the spectre of the dreaded duathlon.

Seine water quality latest

The weekly report, released by the Paris region, revealed: “Water quality remains degraded due to an unfavourable hydrological context: rain, high flow, low sunshine, temperatures below seasonal standards and pollution from upstream.”

Again adverse weather conditions – notably heavy rain in the Paris area last week – were cited as the cause of the river flow growing significantly stronger again, and as a result the continued raised levels of E. coli.

On one day (June 18), the level of E. coli was 10 times the accepted standard for open water swimming, and at no point during the week did it fall below the upper limit set by World Triathlon.

Triathletes swim in the River Seine during the Olympic Games Test Event in Paris in August 2023 (Photo – World Triathlon).

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Organisers bet on improved weather

Despite the apparently gloomy outlook, World Triathlon has “great confidence” that the swims will be able to take place. Meanwhile key local figures are also hopeful that improved weather will change the outlook significantly.

Earlier this week, Marc Guillaume – prefect of the Île-de-France region – again referenced those heavy rains as the major cause of current water quality degradation, and admitted that “summer weather” is required to improve readings.

Meanwhile Tony Estanguet, President of the Paris 2024 organising committee, said: “We will see more clearly in mid-July. This is one of the things we are monitoring closely, we always knew that the water quality would not be there until July 2024.”

Is there a Plan B for triathlon swims?

Good question, and the answer is yes and no.

There are reserve days scheduled for those planned July 30, 31 and August 5 dates – but if they are also scuppered by sub-standard water quality, there is no subsequent backup plan to save the swims.

If that nightmare scenario happens, races would have to be downgraded to duathlon format. A scenario which led triathlon great Mark Allen to provide the following take in his column on TRI247 this week:

“The sport will look like a second-rate event, even though the switch from triathlon to duathlon would be of no fault of the sport.

“Think of it this way. What other sport in the Olympics would tolerate the entire format of it being changed at 3:00am the day of competition? None. Downhill skiing would never make a competitor add in a slalom to contest for the downhill gold because on the day of competition the course was icy!”