Testing the water quality of the Seine, in Paris, August 4, 2023. CHRISTOPHE ENA / AP
Thunderbolt on the Seine, literally and figuratively. The storms of the last few days, in the Paris region, have led to an increase in pollution in the river and made swimming impossible. Consequently, World Aquatics, the international swimming federation, announced on Sunday August 6 at 5 a.m. the cancellation of the open water swimming test events scheduled for the same day on the Seine.
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“The quality of the water remains below acceptable standards to preserve the health of athletes”specifies World Aquatics, in a press release.
Saturday’s women’s race had already been postponed for twenty-four hours and Friday morning’s practice session had already been canceled for the same reasons. It rained from July 20 to August 2 in Paris “four times more than the average over the last twenty years” over the same period, according to the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region, which reported, Thursday afternoon, a “temporary degradation of water quality”.
The cancellation of the competition is a blow for the organizers of Paris 2024 who intended to get in the way of the Olympic deadline. In its press release on Sunday morning, the international federation specifies that it has understood that “future infrastructure will significantly improve the water quality of the Seine between now and the Olympic Games next year”.
” Emergency plan “
But the instance still throws a warning: “Based on this weekend’s experience, it is clear that there will be a need to work going forward with the Paris 2024 organizers and local authorities to ensure that a contingency plan is in place. well in place next year. »
The 2024 Olympic event will be identical to that which was envisaged, with 10 kilometers swum in several loops between the Alexandre III bridge and the Alma bridge.
The cancellation is also a setback for the Paris City Hall, which has made swimming in the Seine a strong focus of its “legacy” component of the Olympics with its citizens. Objective ? Make swimming possible at three points along the Seine. Although nearly 1.4 billion euros have already been invested in this direction, not all the basins intended to capture waste river water have yet been delivered. At the beginning of July, the municipality had thus declared, during a progress report, that nearly 92% of the measurements carried out in the Seine since June 1 had turned out to be “good” or “excellent”. A statistic challenged by the weather of the last few days. The heavy rainfall brought wastewater back to the river and increased the concentration of bacteria Escherichia coli.
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It will therefore be necessary to wait before athletes from all over the world swim the crawl between the Alma bridge and the Alexandre III bridge. A false start in the form of a wet firecracker which has the merit of illustrating the challenges that await the authorities in view of Paris 2024.
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If the weather were to play spoilsport again, in the summer of 2024, the organizers had long planned to be able to move the Olympic events by a few days. An option that had not been put forward for this round of the World Cup.
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A next test event, that of triathlon and paratriathlon, which includes a swimming part in the Seine, must take place in the center of Paris from August 17 to 20. The organizing committee of the Paris Olympics specifies, Sunday morning in another press release, that “water quality will continue to be carefully monitored, in the confident hope – based on current weather forecasts – that top athletes will be able to participate in [cette] competition in the Seine ».