2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES
- Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
- Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
- La Défense Arena — Paris, France
- LCM (50 meters)
- Meet Central
- Full Schedule
- SwimSwam Preview Index
- Entry Lists
The Seine River is a central feature of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Not only is it playing host to the opening ceremony with athlete delegations carried on boats down the iconic river, but open water and triathlon are scheduled to use it for their race courses.
Paris Games organizers have spent over a billion euros (approximately 1.5 billion USD) on a years-long effort to clean up the Seine and get it ready for the Olympic and Paralympic athletes. But even as athletes float down the river as part of the opening ceremony, questions about the Seine’s cleanliness remain. On their live broadcast of the ceremony, NBC broadcasters reported that E. coli levels in the river are “too high” today. If the triathlon or open water events were scheduled for today, July 26, they would be postponed.
In April, Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, warned that heavy rain could lead to dangerous levels of pollution in the Seine. It is currently raining in Paris, the first time that it’s rained at an opening ceremony since 1952. Pollution and the potential for high E. coli levels are part of the reason that organizers scheduled the triathlon events for early in the Games’ schedule, Estanguet explained.
Open water swimming events are scheduled for August 8 and 9, which means less flexibility to move the competition. On August 9, the date for the women’s 10K, there is a 60% chance of rain. It could also be windy on both days, making the Seine choppy.
After months of reiterating that there was no Plan B if the Seine was unsafe to swim in, organizers finally unveiled a Plan B for open water events. The backup plan for the triathlon events would be to just shorten the triathlon to a duathlon.
After reports of improving enterococci and E. coli bacteria levels, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo fulfilled her promise to swim in the Seine. Hidalgo postponed her initial dip but jumped in on July 17 with Estanguet, regional prefect Marc Guillaume, and French open water swimmer Enzo Gallet.
If at any moment the Seine can be flooded with dangerous levels of e coli I think we can conclude that their plan to clean the river has failed.
It would have been nice if the legacy of a “green” Olympics would be a cleaned up river.
LOL. There is not a city in the world (at least any large city) that I would ever swim in a river that flows through it. Maybe (big maybe) upstream from the city. For a city as large and old as Paris, you are essentially swimming in a sewer.
I live in Vienna and the Danube here is very nice to swim in. We do it all summer long and it’s constantly tested and very clean. I would absolutely not swim in the Seine though.
https://runsignup.com/Race/IL/Chicago/ChicagoRiverSwim Chicago is doing its first swimming event in the river this fall. Wonder how many bodies were sunk in the river at the height of the Chicago moon days.
It would be nice to know exactly how high the levels are
And where he got the info from.
Seine River testing results can be found at Weather of the Seine: what is the quality of the water in the Seine – City of Paris
Just one whiff should send thousands to the hospital.
Who could have seen this coming?