After Olympic Triathlons in Seine, Leaders Hail Dual Wins for France
It was a very, very good day for Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
A day she had dreamed about for nine years. A day she could gloat about to the critics who had long said it was impossible. A day of blissful sun after the deluge.
After all the mockery and doubts, after delays because of bad water quality induced by rain — and forecasts for more storms — the stretch of the Seine designated to host the Olympic triathlons was deemed clean enough for the races on Wednesday morning. A horn sounded, and more than 100 elite athletes dove in before thousands of adoring fans.
And then, as if preordained, the French triathlete Cassandre Beaugrand was the first woman to swim, bike and run her way to the finish line across the Alexandre III Bridge, winning her country another gold. A few hours later, the French triathlete Léo Bergère won a bronze in the men’s event, behind Alex Yee of Britain and Hayden Wilde of New Zealand.
“It was the cherry on the cake,” Ms. Hidalgo said before a huge, roaring crowd that lined the river and streets to cheer on the athletes, with some spectators stopping her for selfies.
Just weeks ago, France brimmed with critics and skeptics over its plans for the Olympics and the role the river would play in them. The idea to hold the opening ceremony exposed along the Seine, instead of inside a barricaded stadium, seemed foolhardy, particularly in a city scarred by terrorism. The pharaonic efforts to clean the river’s water enough to host not just the triathlon but marathon swimming seemed an expensive fool’s errand.
Locals were largely neither impressed nor excited, polls revealed. Many fled the city. For those who stayed, complaining about the heavy security protocol, traffic jams and overflowing subways once the hordes of tourists descended on the city became a competitive pastime.
Just days after the soaked opening ceremony, much of that criticism has evaporated with the rain.
“We are so happy,” Caroline Ravier, 42, said as she waited along the road for the triathletes to pass with her two sons, one of whom waved a French flag. “At the beginning, everyone complained, saying it cost too much. But I have the impression now everyone in France agrees it was a good idea.”
The idea to hold Olympic events in the Seine was planted in 2015, the year the city kicked off its bid, Ms. Hidalgo said, and would mean “reconquering the river through depollution.”
Considered one of the most romantic rivers in the world, the Seine was also classified as among the most polluted with heavy metals.
Swimming in the river had been banned since 1923. The diversity of fish species had plummeted. In 1990, Mayor Jacques Chirac promised to clean the river and swim in it in just three years. That didn’t happen. Many expected another empty promise this time.
But the Olympics brought the attention, a deadline and importantly, the $1.5 billion budget to do it. It also offered a chance for a legacy-building achievement; the mayor has promised that Parisians will be able to swim in the Seine next summer in three spots.
Focused on preventing damaging bacteria from flowing into the Seine, particularly during storms, the multipronged plan was an engineer’s dream wrapped in delicate social outreach. It involved convincing thousands of homeowners upstream from Paris to connect to the sewer system and forcing some 170 houseboat owners who live moored to the riverbanks to install sewage management systems so that their boats would no longer dump toilet water into the river. Performic acid was added to the effluent from an upstream Seine-Valenton wastewater plant, which treats the wastewater of 2.5 million people, and another treatment for bacteria added to a different plant.
In May, Paris opened a giant underground water-storage tank on the Seine’s left bank that can hold 13.2 million gallons of rainwater — enough to fill 20 Olympic-size pools. It is one of five big engineering projects built to hold rainwater during storms. Previously,rain and wastewater were released into the Seine so as to not overwhelm the city’s antique sewer system.
The result has been a big drop in E. coli and intestinal enterococci, two indicator bacteria that can cause illness in humans, often to levels below the threshold set by the European bathing directive.
Still, rainstorms can cause spikes in bacterial levels as dirty water runs off the roads into the river and sewage systems are overloaded, dispelling their water into the river.
And torrents of rain fell on the city during the opening ceremony on Friday and Saturday — a typical month’s worth over 36 hours, authorities said.
The ensuing test results showed bacteria levels above the thresholds acceptable to members of World Triathlon, the governing body of the sport. They canceled familiarization swims in the Seine on two consecutive days, and then postponed the men’s triathlon by a day.
If the tests had not come back clear, they could have postponed the swims again. There was even reluctant talk of dropping the swim altogether and converting the event into a duathlon, which would have been not just a huge disappointment to athletes but also a thick splash of mud in the face of the city and Ms. Hidalgo.
Last night, storms were forecast to pound the city again.
Instead, the storm largely spared the Paris region, the weather office said.
Test results from the most recent samples showed E. coli and intestinal enterococci counts well below the European bathing directive threshold, said Marc Guillaume, the prefect of the Paris region. After a consultation at 3:20 a.m., World Triathlon put out a message on the X platform: “We will swim.”
“Sometimes in life you can be lucky,” Ms. Hidalgo said. “But I felt confident in all the work we had put into this.”
Gathered around the Alexandre III bridge, below which triathletes dove into the water and later picked up their bikes and finally running shoes before speeding off again, the mayor and a panoply of state and Olympic representatives held their own competition of superlatives.
“This should allow French people to regain a deep sense of confidence in their capacity to accomplish their dreams,” the country’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, said.
Tony Estanguet, the head of the organizing committee for these Games, said it was “wonderful and super” and that he was “very, very, very happy.”
President Emmanuel Macron of France celebrated the races, saying on social media, “We have achieved in four years what was impossible for 100 years: the Seine is swimmable.”
The drizzle stopped, the clouds parted and the sun emerged, burnishing the bridge’s gold statues of winged horses and the dome over Napoleon’s tomb nearby. The Eiffel Tower rose just down the river, in clear sight.
“It’s incredible. It’s magical. In fact, I think it’s the most beautiful course we’ve seen in a long time,” Beaugrand, 27, told reporters after her win.
When asked what it was like to swim in the Seine, more than a century after swimming there was banned, many athletes mentioned the cool temperatures and the fierce current. They were not worried about the water quality.
“We have swum in much worse water,” Beaugrand said, adding that she was sick of the topic.
The mayor, prefect and others already swam in the Seine this month in an attempt to convince Parisians that all their efforts had in fact worked. Now that Olympians have really swum there, they are hoping that the prospect will sink in.
As spectators pulled off their rain jackets and sweated under a beating sun along the edges, waiting to cheer on the athletes, many said that they needed no more convincing, even as polls suggest most think otherwise.
As she fanned herself, Loubna Mansouri, 39, said, “We all would love to dive in.”
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