From our special correspondent in Paris – After cancelled training sessions and a last-minute postponement caused by unexpected storms spilling sewage into the Seine, Paris’s cherished dream of making the capital’s river clean enough to swim in came true Wednesday in the men’s and women’s individual triathlons.
For the uninitiated, watching a triathlon can feel like witnessing some kind of religious procession. In the final footrace, the runners have something of the penitent about them, all spare flesh flensed from their frames, their unflagging gaze fixed on a point that only they can see.
As the first runners lurch across the finish line on Paris’s Alexander III Bridge on Wednesday, some crumple to the ground, prostrate beneath the eyes of the gilded angels overhead. One or two curl in on themselves, exhausted, before clambering slowly onto all fours. A man takes three stiff strides across the finish and vomits. Some of them are sobbing.
It is an incredible spectacle of the limits of human endurance. That morning, women and men alike had plunged into the churning waters of the River Seine, fighting against the current before mounting their bikes on the bridge above. From there, they launched into lap after lap of central Paris before finishing the race on foot. They raced in the shadow of some of France’s most unmistakeable monuments: the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, the Champs-Élysées, the Musée d’Orsay.
But it was another testament to human engineering that drew all eyes on Wednesday morning. For years, Paris’s government had promised to make history by holding the Olympic triathlon in the newly purified river itself, showcasing centuries of French culture and paying tribute to a decade of determined public works.
For the throngs lining the banks, it must have seemed a strange sight. Battered by the storm-fed current, the swimmers quickly stretched out in single file, cleaving close to the moored boats sheltering along the water's edge. Clambering up onto the pontoon that marked the race's first turning point, they launched themselves back into the Seine, this time swimming against the stream.
Speaking after the race, French gold medallist Cassandre Beaugrand said she had had a few fraught moments in the river’s rain-chilled waters.
“I got scared quite a few times because the current carried us away a lot – it wasn’t so easy to swim in the Seine,” she said. Despite making up the distance in the final footrace, she added, it had been an inauspicious start to the event.
“It wasn't necessarily the place I would have liked, because I passed the buoy in third place and was carried away by the current. I said to myself, ‘no, it's not possible’.” The UK's Alex Yee took home the gold in the men's triathlon shortly after.
Let's wind the clock back a bit. Parallel to the preparations for the Paris 2024 Olympics, another marathon has long been under way, pitting humanity’s hubris not just against the elemental forces of nature, but the excremental efforts of millions of Parisians.
In the 10 years leading up to the Games, the municipal government spent roughly one and a half billion dollars renovating the capital’s creaking storm and wastewater infrastructure. The goal seemed simple enough: to render the River Seine once again clean enough for humans to swim in. And not just for the Olympics, but for future generations, long after the last triathlete had crossed the finish line.
The problem was not unique to Paris. Many of Europe’s older cities have a combined sewer system that captures stormwater and wastewater alike before routing the resulting slurry through treatment plants. The more violent the storm, the greater the risk that these pipes will reach capacity, giving the wastewater nowhere else to go but into the river.
It’s difficult, now, to remember a time when Parisians were not subjected to what seemed like weekly updates on the project’s slow progress. In the months leading up to the Games, the testing intensified. Each time, the news was grim: the shining waters of the Seine, we were told, contained too high a concentration of E.coli bacteria – a tell-tale sign of what monitors delicately referred to as foecal matter.
Finally, in July, the good news came: with the updated infrastructure at last in place, all that was left was to wait for the scalding summer sun to scour away the last traces of the Seine’s scatalogical shame. Then the day of the Opening Ceremony came, and a storm of Biblical proportions hit Paris.
On Friday, the city flooded. On Saturday, the rain fell without remorse, sending cyclists skidding across the slippery Paris streets. On Sunday, the organisers cancelled the first practice session for the upcoming men’s triathlon. All eyes were on Paris, and the waters of the Seine were still not fit for the world’s finest athletes.
Another day passed, and another training session was called off – this time, on the eve of the men’s individual triathlon. The sun was shining, but the water quality tests brooked no appeal. A stifling night passed, promising another scorching summer day. It wasn’t enough – the first triathlon event of the 2024 Paris Olympics was pushed back.
At best, the men would compete the following day, after the women’s event. At worst, both men and women would be forced to compete in an altogether different competition, one with no swimming stage at all. Late on Tuesday night, after the Games’ hottest day yet, a rising wind brought the rumour of distant thunder. Rain began to fall, fitful and then with force.
But even as the rain continued on Wednesday morning, the report from the Games’ organisers was unambiguous. The Seine’s waters had been tested, and they were clean. The strength of the current had been measured, and although it promised to push swimmers to their limits, it was nothing they hadn’t competed in before. Now, finally, the race could begin.
Was it worth it? It depends who you ask. South African triathlete Henri Schoeman, who finished 20th in the race, said that the controversy over the river-cleaning project had somewhat eclipsed the competition.
"All the talk was about the river, it wasn’t really about the athletes," he said. "It is a bit of a shame, that there was a shadow on this whole river story – it is what it is, it’s part of the game and you have to adapt to it."
Happy enough to talk to reporters, Schoeman said he had remained tight-lipped through the swimming race itself.
"You’ve just got to hope that you don’t swallow water in the swim, because it can be rough," he said. "But if you’re unlucky, it’s not great – because we all have races after this, and you want to carry on, make money, get results. You just want to carry on and not get sick."
Apart from anything else, though, Schoeman said that being able to run past cheering crowds in the heart of Paris had been an unforgettable experience.
"The crowds were incredible, it was incredible – there was just so much noise," he said. "And I love that, that’s racing. In Tokyo we never had that, so to have all these crowds come out was spectacular."
