Will the persistent rains falling on Paris cause the pre-Olympic swimming test competition in the Seine to fall into the water this weekend? After the cancellation of training on Friday, all the authorities are feverishly scrutinizing the pollution of the river and the weather. It must be said that the skies have been unusually rainy for more than a week. Nearly 104 millimeters of rain poured, sometimes in tropical storm mode, between July 20 and early August, according to the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region. And this is precisely the dark scenario feared by the organizers: heavy rains which overflow the sewers and pollute the water of the Seine.
“Following recent heavy rains in Paris, the quality of the water in the Seine is currently below acceptable standards for safeguarding the health of swimmers”, explained Thursday evening the French Swimming Federation (FFN), who took together with the international federation World Aquatics and “public health partners” the decision to cancel the training session. This open water swimming World Cup event, Saturday for women and Sunday for men, between the Pont Alexandre III and the Pont de l’Alma (10 km swum in a loop) is above all a “test” event. for the Paris Olympics in a year.
Escherichia coli analysis
The organizing committee of the Olympic Games, the town hall of Paris, the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region, sports federations, among others, have been looking into water analyzes and weather forecasts for days. A meeting is scheduled for Friday afternoon, and the international and national swimming federations will say more about 5:00 p.m. Several options are possible: holding the competition on Saturday, its cancellation, or even waiting for new results which could be examined overnight from Friday to Saturday, we learned from the FFN.
The “temporary degradation of water quality”, according to the IDF prefecture, raises the most scrutinized rate, that of the presence of the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli. World Aquatics imposes for this bacterium a rate lower than 1000 CFU for 100 ml so that the competition can take place. On July 27, based on 42 samples from June and July, the IDF prefecture gave a “principle” green light to this weekend’s competition as well as to that of the triathlon (August 17-20). whose swimming part must be held in the Seine.
“Works completed in the next few months”
Thursday evening, the organizing committee of the Olympic Games, which must use this competition to run in the course and equipment (pontoons, buoys …), the town hall of Paris and the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region ensured in a joint press release that “one year from the Games, the sanitation dynamic continues with the completion of the most significant work to improve water quality in the coming months, in particular to deal with these events exceptional weather conditions”. Because these competitions in the Seine are also preludes to future swimming promised for 2025 by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo (PS), on three sites while swimming has been prohibited there since 1923.
This is why among the worksites of the State and the communities for these bathings appear in particular works such as the Austerlitz basin, still under construction, which will make it possible to store rainwater (50,000 m3), and to operate in 2024. For the Olympic event, the organizers have long planned to be able to postpone the events by two or three days, in the event of storms and heavy rain. An Olympic discipline since 2008, open water swimming is regularly talked about. In Tokyo, at the end of the test event in 2019, swimmers protested against the quality of the water in Tokyo Bay, which was also overheated.
At the Rio Olympics in 2016, the prospect of swimming in Guanabara Bay, also very polluted, also hit the headlines.