“Swimming in the Seine, I prefer to warn everyone, there is much worse”. Vincent Luis, one of the leaders of the French triathlon team, is not worried on the eve of having to dive into the Seine. One year before the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the triathlon “test event”, which begins this Thursday August 17 with the girls’ event and will run until Sunday August 20, is a real life-size rehearsal. The quality of the water and the risks of pollution do not worry the athletes. “There is much worse than the Seine,” he adds, on RMC Sport.
This event comes less than two weeks after the cancellation of the open water swim test event scheduled for Saturday August 5th and Sunday August 6th. This decision, taken by the International Olympic Committee and the organizers of the Paris Olympics, was justified by the poor quality of the water, “below acceptable standards”. In question, the heavy rains that had fallen on Paris, overflowing the sewers and bringing wastewater into the river.
Despite this first failure, the triathletes all say they are confident and are just waiting for the start of their competition. “I think there are much worse places where I could swim before, but it was not necessarily said,” explained Cassandre Beaugrand, who tried to find an explanation for this hype: “People make it maybe also crates because swimming in the Seine is an event. […] We are a bit of guinea pigs, but it’s exciting too.
As a good regular, he says he understands the difficulties that the organizers can encounter and wants to be “tolerant”. “We’re still used to swimming in big cities with all the complexity that brings.”
Cleaning up the Seine is now the job of the municipality and the organizers. Among the construction sites of the State and the communities, with a view to these bathings, there are in particular structures such as the Austerlitz basin, still under construction, which will make it possible to store rainwater (50,000 m3), and which will be in operation in 2024.
Failing at this task is therefore not an option, because the organizing committee of the Olympic Games does not foresee a plan B. Brigitte Légaré, responsible for competitions in Paris Center, had explained that “one day” is planned to shift the tests if there is a problem.
