It seems the sporting conditions at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games are not ideal — at least not for the swimmers.
On Wednesday, an Olympic triathlete representing Belgium revealed that the water in France’s iconic Seine River — featured at the beginning of the women’s triathlon — is not exactly of the best quality.
The triathlete, Jolien Vermeylen, said she ingested quite a bit of the river’s polluted water during the trial.
âWhile swimming under the bridge, I felt and saw things that we shouldnât think about too much,â Vermeylen said during an interview with Flemish news channel VTM, according to the U.K.’s Metro.
âWeâll know tomorrow if Iâm sick or not … It doesnât taste like Coca-Cola or Sprite, of course.â
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Officials responsible for keeping the athletes safe claimed the water was clean enough to swim in.
“Clean enough,” doesn’t exactly mean “clean,” however.
According to the New York Post, tests performed in June found the river had E. coli levels “10 times above the acceptable levels.”
E. coli is linked to diarrhea, urinary tract infections, pneumonia and sepsis.
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âDespite the improvement on the water quality levels in the last hours, the readings at some points of the swim course are still above the acceptable limits,â officials said, according to the Post.
The race was postponed multiple times to give officials time to improve the water conditions. For the Games overall, the site received $1.5 billion in infrastructure improvements to help with that effort.
Nevertheless, it seems officials were still unable to get the river quality up as high as the athletes would prefer.
Vermeylen certainly felt they hadn’t done enough.
The athlete even went as far as to claim that Olympic officials were putting her and others in danger with their negligence.
âThe Seine has been dirty for a hundred years, so they canât say that the safety of the athletes is a priority. Thatâs bulls***!â she said.
To ward off disease, âI took pro-biotics, I drank my Yakult, I couldnât do more. I had the idea of âânot drinking water, but yes, it failed,” she said.
“It was now or never, and they couldnât cancel the race completely, either.
“Now they just have to hope that there wonât be too many sick athletes.â
