A weekend of torrential rain that swept millions of gallons of sewage into the Seine could force Paris Olympic organizers to cancel the swim leg of the triathlon—and puncture a long-held dream for the city’s mayor.
Authorities have spent some $1.5 billion cleaning up the Seine before the Paris Games, installing a huge tank that can hold 12 million gallons of wastewater to stop it spilling into the river.
But the system couldn’t cope with the heavy rains that put a damper on Friday’s opening ceremony and continued unabated over the weekend. On Monday, as the sun finally came out again, organizers canceled for the second straight day a “familiarization’” swim for triathletes because of the high bacteria levels. Officially, they remain “confident” that the men’s and women’s races can still go ahead on Tuesday and Wednesday—but it looks increasingly likely the Paris Olympic triathlon will go into the record books as a duathlon, with the swim leg canceled but the cycling and running legs still taking place.
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For the athletes, and spectators with tickets for the triathlon, that would be a disappointment. For city officials including Mayor Anne Hidalgo, it would come as a more painful blow.
When Paris became the first city outside Greece to host the modern Olympic Games back in 1900, the Seine was more than just a cutesy backdrop. The swimming races took place in the river itself, and there was even an underwater race (even though the Danish favorite swam in circles through the murky water and finished third).
The next time Paris served as Olympic host, in 1924, the swimming events had their own dedicated venue, the Piscine des Tourelles. Swimming in the Seine, long considered ill-advised, had actually been made illegal the previous year.
Bringing the Seine back to life, and cleaning it up to allow swimmers to return, has been one of Hidalgo’s pet projects. Skeptics have questioned whether the clean-up was even possible—tests this spring found bacterial levels were 20 times higher than World Triathlon safety limits.
On July 17, a week before the Olympics began, Hidalgo and about 100 city officials took a public dip in the Seine—the first legal dip in a century—to show that the river was now safe for swimmers. The swim was postponed twice because of bacteria levels, however, and subsequent tests showed the water that day had not met safety standards.
The men’s triathlon is due to start at 8 a.m. Tuesday and the women’s race at the same time on Wednesday. If the levels of E. coli and other potentially harmful bacteria has not dropped sufficiently, both races could be pushed back to Friday.
After that, according to World Triathlon rules, the 1500m swim section of the race would have to be canceled and Paris would have to wait for another generation of Olympians to return to the Seine.
“Given the weather forecast for the next 36 hours, Paris 2024 and World Triathlon are confident that water quality will return to below limits before the start of the triathlon competitions on July 30,” organizers said in a statement, according to Reuters.
