Seine Is Finally Clean: Olympic Triathlon Starts in Paris

After problems with the water quality in the Seine overshadowed preparations for the Olympic competitions, a women's triathlon started on Wednesday in the waterway of the French capital.

This was reported by France 24.

The organisers had to cancel training in the river this week and postpone the men's triathlon competition after it turned out that the Seine was too dirty for the athletes after heavy rains last week.

The World Triathlon and the Paris Games organising committee announced around 4:00am on Wednesday that the women's event would go ahead, followed by the postponed men's competition.

‘The results of the latest water tests, received at 3.20am, have been assessed by World Triathlon as meeting the requirements to allow triathlon competition to take place,’ the statement said.

It had been raining in Paris at night, but it stopped when the athletes jumped from a pontoon thrown across the river on the Pont Alexandre III.

Due to the extremely wet spring and early summer, the Seine consistently failed water quality tests until early July.

The level of E. coli bacteria, an indicator of faecal matter, was sometimes 10 times higher than the permitted limits.

Over the past decade, the French authorities have invested €1.4 billion in cleaning up the Seine.

As The Gaze previously reported, the organisers of the Paris Olympics cancelled the preparatory stage and then postponed the triathlon competition, which was to take place on Tuesday on the Seine River. They did not like the water quality.