Will the first swim test in the Seine fall through before the start is even given? Since the rain was invited to the program of the open water swimming World Cup round, scheduled for Paris on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 August, the competition has been suspended. The training session which was to take place on Friday at 7:30 a.m. has already been canceled.
“Following recent heavy rains in Paris, the water quality of the Seine is currently below acceptable standards for safeguarding the health of swimmers, announced the French Swimming Federation (FFN) Thursday evening. Therefore, the decision has been made, in consultation with public health and event organization partners, to cancel the training session. »
At this stage, the competitions of August 5 and 6 remain scheduled “pending new water quality tests”, specifies the FFN. A decision on the holding of the tests must be made on Friday at 5 p.m.
This heavy rainfall and its consequences in terms of pollution are bad news for the organizers of Paris 2024, who intend to make this World Cup a “life-size” test of future open water swimming events, just under one year of the Olympics.
A stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower, the swimmers on Saturday and the swimmers on Sunday initially had to crawl 10 kilometers between the Pont de l’Alma and the Pont Alexandre III. An idyllic image that the organizers of the competition may have to postpone. Since the heavy rainfall caused the Parisian sewers to overflow and brought waste water back to the Seine, the latter have had their eyes riveted on the quality of the Parisian streams, and in particular on their concentration of Escherichia coli bacteria.
Night meetings
“If there is no improvement in the weather, it will be complicated,” conceded one of the control institutions concerned to Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday. With the degraded weather of recent days, the standards required by the international swimming federation seem difficult to maintain. Especially since all the construction sites to buffer the used river water have not yet been completed, such as the Austerlitz basin, still under construction, and which should make it possible to store 50,000 m3 of rainwater from 2024.
If Thursday, July 27, the prefecture of the Île-de-France region had given the green light “in principle”, on the basis of bacteriological analyzes of June and July, a first night meeting must be held on the night of Thursday to Friday to decide on the holding of the competition. If the results of the samples taken were not conclusive, World Aquatics (the international swimming federation) would be forced to cancel the World Cup stage. On the other hand, for the Olympics, the organizers have planned to be able to move the events for a few days, in the event of storms or heavy rain.
“We are working to modernize the wastewater treatment facilities and renew the pipes and infrastructure to conserve unclean water in the event of a storm, explained, at the beginning of June, the prefect Marc Guillaume. Two-thirds of the depollution objectives were achieved this summer. Excluding stormy episodes, we are in compliance with the European regulations in force”. Since 2016, the State and local authorities have earmarked nearly 1.4 billion euros for construction sites intended for swimming in the Seine.
A premise for future swimming promised for 2025 by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, on three sites. “It is estimated that the plan for 2024 has made it possible to gain ten years on the effectiveness of swimming in the Seine, it will be an important legacy of these Olympic Games”, noted, at the beginning of July, Pierre Rabadan, deputy to the sports of the City of Paris. Early last month, Paris City Hall said nearly 92% of measurements taken since June 1 had been found to be “good” or “excellent”. A statistic challenged by the weather for the next few days.
