PARIS — As the rain poured down at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Paris Deputy Mayor Pierre Rabadin stood in the stands, soaked. For a brief moment, he felt anxious.
The city has spent €1.5 billion ($1.4 billion) on a project to clean up the Seine. Most recently, he was responsible for ensuring a riverside celebration involving hundreds of floating boats could be held safely. More daunting, the Seine will host four Olympic events, including triathlons and marathon swimming.
The lasting impact of these Games would be on the river itself: nearly a hundred years ago, Parisians could safely swim in the Seine. The dream was to use the Olympic Games as a vehicle to lead the city to do so again.
But there was one crucial flaw.
Heavy rains at any given time were enough to spike levels of E. coli and other bacteria in the Seine, and there was little the city could do to stop it. Paris had gone to great lengths to build and install an underground reservoir capable of holding enough water to fill 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools, but heavy rains would have flooded the river banks, overwhelmed the filtration process, and disrupted a key moment in the city’s history.
While 10,500 of the world’s best athletes were swimming in the river, a month’s worth of rain fell in just 36 hours. Rabadan knew the consequences – both for the competition and for public opinion.
Indeed, officials canceled a pre-triathlon swim due to water quality. Then they canceled another. While organizers met at midnight to collect water samples, contingency plans were in place to hold a duathlon instead. When the marathon pre-triathlon swim was canceled the following week, organizers were ready to activate a backup site.
The backup plan for the 10km swim was to hold it at the rowing/canoeing venue. There was no backup venue for the triathlon, which would have been a duathlon.
Ultimate all races All went well on the Seine. The Champs-Élysées and Grand Palais provided a stunning backdrop, and each race ended in a nerve-wracking finale, but the controversy on the river never ended. One triathlete vomited profusely after competing. Another was later reported to have contracted an E. coli infection. The truth is, as usual, it was somewhere in the middle.
“The criticism was unnecessary. It wasn’t always constructive. Were we right to do it? Was it worth it? Yes, because allowing athletes to swim in the Seine and allowing Parisians to swim (there) in the future will help the river,” Rabadan told ESPN.
“It was worth it, even with all the criticism,” he added. Depending on who you talk to, that question—“Was it worth it?”—will elicit different answers. Did the city put the aesthetics of the race above the health of the athletes, and will that happen again at the Olympics?
“This legacy should inspire many other cities in the future,” Rabandan added.
The 2024 Olympics in Paris were, by almost all accounts, a huge success. Viewership and sponsorship soared. Public transportation ran smoothly. Major controversy was largely avoided. The decision to use one of the city’s most iconic landmarks—its 777-kilometer-long river—as a venue was perhaps the Games’ low point.
Concerns about water quality are nothing new to the Olympics, or to athletes who compete in open water all over the world year-round, often near urban areas. These issues are prevalent everywhere, including in North America. The 2016 Rio Olympics were marred by severe pollution—both sewage and garbage—at several venues. Tokyo needed drastic measures to clean up its bay, though an athlete’s widely circulated comment that it “smelled like a toilet” remains a shame. The water quality at Los Angeles’s open water venue at Alamitos Beach in Long Beach is sure to be a topic of conversation for the next four years.
Paris is an interesting case study, both in how the organisers handled the event and in the way the issues were addressed. The World Triathlon Organisation said that E. coli levels on race day were “very good”, and only a few athletes subsequently reported gastrointestinal problems, although none could be linked to the river.
Claire Michel, an athlete who was reported to have contracted E. coli, was from Belgium. Rumors circulated that she had been hospitalized, but she later confirmed that little of this information was true. Instead, she went to the medical clinic in the Olympic Village and confirmed that she had a stomach virus, not E. coli. However, when Belgium announced her illness, it added a message urging organizers to “learn lessons” for the future.
Some athletes have privately complained to their coaches and federations about the complications surrounding the bridges, sources say. Others were unhappy with the last-minute nature of the alerts; finding out whether they’re competitive or not at 4 a.m. is not ideal for athletes who thrive on routine.
Belgian triathlete Martin van Riel commented on the ITU’s Instagram post announcing the postponement of the men’s race: “If the health of the athletes was the priority, this event would have been moved somewhere else a long time ago.”
“We’re just puppets in a puppet show.”
But many participants felt the worst-case scenarios were exaggerated, with several pointing out how amazing it would be to compete in such an iconic venue. When Canadian triathlete Tyler Msslavchuk was filmed vomiting repeatedly after finishing ninth, it immediately made international headlines. Days later, a Canadian spokesman confirmed that Msslavchuk’s illness had nothing to do with the Seine, and everything to do with Msslavchuk “trying his best.”
“I’m just a kid from Winnipeg, Oak Bluff specifically, where it gets 50 degrees below zero in the winter,” Myslawchuk told Triathlon Magazine. “And here I am at the Summer Olympics… I came to the start line healthy and gave it my all. You want more, but this is all I have.”
The Canadian federation has prepared athletes for potential water quality issues, saying they are aware of the risks posed by water quality in Paris as well as other race sites around the world each year. Canada’s director of high performance, Phil Dunne, has implemented a preventative protocol from a team of doctors and nutritionists to minimize the risk of gastrointestinal illness. A spokesperson for the federation said Canadians have full confidence in the mitigation plans put in place by the World Triathlon Championships and Paris 2024 to prioritize the health and safety of athletes.
The controversy surrounding the race has led to it receiving more attention and media coverage than any triathlon in history, with some within the sport hoping that this would actually help increase its audience.
open water The venue for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is Alamitos Beach in Long Beach. While water quality issues persist in any urban area, the venue is in a much better position to succeed. Alamitos Beach is a popular recreational swimming area and regularly hosts open-water events, including the 2022 Triathlon America’s Cup and the 2023 Para-Triathlon World Cup. Perhaps most importantly, the Olympics will be held during Southern California’s dry season, which will alleviate one of Paris’ biggest problems: runoff after a rainstorm.
Heal the Bay, a California-based environmental advocacy organization, has consistently rated Alamitos beaches with grades of A and B (good for recreational use), including during last summer’s dry season. However, during the record-breaking winter of 2023-24, these beaches received grades of C and F. Long Beach is a shipping hub and home to the largest container terminal in America. Alamitos Beach has been prone to sewage spills — including a 47,000-gallon incident, caused by infrastructure damage from the rains, that closed all swimming areas in February.
Long Beach spokesman Kevin Lee said the city has been committed to the continued improvement of recreational waters for a very long time, having implemented major projects over the past two decades related to stormwater management, green infrastructure, dredging, low-flow diversion, litter picking and watershed projects. Lee said plans are underway for a litter picker to keep coastal beaches clean by picking up more debris when it goes into the water.
“The waters along our shores are ready to welcome amazing athletes from all over the world,” he added.
As for Paris, city officials hope to open three areas on the Seine River next year for public swimming each summer. They see it primarily as a tool to help cool residents during recurring heat waves, as well as providing free access to swimming.
“For us, being able to restore better water quality is the greatest legacy we can imagine,” Rabadan said.
But the uncertainty over the river will not end. People will still be taking water samples every day, and increasing pollution will cause the river to be temporarily closed. That means Parisians will have a similar experience to the Olympics: looking outside on the morning after a heavy downpour and wondering if it is safe to swim.
