Seine River Pollution: Athletes’ Unforgettable Experience
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s brief underwater excursion into the Seine a few days before the Olympic Games began was insufficient; in the end, the water was neither clean nor ready to receive anyone.
The athletes were forced to jump into the grim reality, covered only by their swimsuits and their priceless treasures, even though the Olympic Committee reiterated on more than one occasion that the “health of the athletes was the priority.”
The river looked dark and choppy from the aerial shots, and the smell wasn’t exactly that of a sunflower field in spring.
Since January, Anne Hidalgo has been promising to swim in the icy waters of the Seine, and it took six months for her to dare to enter the gray waters that she and all French presidents since Jacques Chirac in 1988 have promised to clean up.
It’s not just Parisians who have been deprived of the pleasurable sensation of skin against the frigid current of the Seine for a century; marine life has also suffered, having been completely non-existent for 50 years due to low oxygen and high levels of pollution in the waters, according to Jean-Marie Mouchel, a professor at Sorbonne University who has been studying the river’s waters since 1980.
The race to reclaim the Seine has been arduous and difficult. Considerable capital investment and human effort were needed to reduce pollution levels to the minimum possible. It was an Olympic-level test of speed and endurance, and yet it seems to have been unsuccessful.
In June alone, the waters contained ten times more E. coli bacteria than permitted. Of course, the Olympic Games were just a charming way of romanticizing the recovery of the Seine. All French people are concerned about the environmental impact of the dead Seine flowing through the country.
The pollution is so high that marine life continues to openly fight against extinction, and its putrid waters are still not optimal for human consumption.
The dates of July 26 and 27 were critical. Experts announced that the waters were not in excellent condition due to the torrential rains that fell from the sky over Paris, which had increased the number of bacteria sailing through the river.
The idea of holding a duathlon, like the 2023 European Championships, won by David Castro, was considered, but that would completely change the rules of the game, and they did not want to risk making a fool of themselves in front of the world. So in the end, the athletes were forced to jump into the water.
The men’s triathlon was won by Great Britain’s Alex Yee, while the women’s was won by local Cassandre Beaugrand. Colombian Maria Carolina Velazquez came in 37th, just seven minutes and eighteen seconds behind Cassandre, but it was Jolien Vermeylen, who came in 24th, who complained about the event with disdain and a bit of black humor.
“When I was going under the bridge, I felt and saw things we shouldn’t think about too much.” I drank a lot of water; we’ll see tomorrow if I’m sick or not. It doesn’t taste like Coca-Cola or Sprite, of course. I hope, for the sake of the organization, that there won’t be too many sick athletes. I take my probiotics and Yakult; that’s all I can do. Of course I didn’t want to drink water, but I failed, just as I had the idea of not losing the race, and in the end I didn’t succeed,” said the Belgian after finishing the race, also admitting that canceling the race would have been a complete failure for the Olympic Games.
Regarding the state of the water, Etienne Thobois, CEO of Paris 2024, also spoke out: “We are not working on hypothetical or fictitious scenarios. We are very respectful of the athletes, who are the heart of the games. We have done everything we could, alongside the international federations and public authorities, to achieve the objective of swimming in the Seine.”
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