At last, the paratriathlon races at the Paris 2024 Paralympics WILL go ahead today (September 2) – with swims as planned in the River Seine.
The grim topic of water quality in the Seine has been a thorny subject in recent weeks – first at the Olympic Games and now the Paralympics. With schedule changes and postponements causing major disruption for athlete preparations.
The initial plan for the Paralympics was to split the 11 races across Sunday and Monday (September 1 and 2), but then late last week the decision was taken to move them all to Sunday with concerning weather forecasts for the French capital.
But even that change wasn’t enough to guarantee racing, with the events all postponed after it was found early on Sunday that water quality was still not safe enough for swims to take place. The move was then made to move the races to today (Monday).
Paratriathlon gets green light
Finally, late on Sunday evening, the announcement came through that the races WILL go ahead today (Monday September 2), with the first of 11 events scheduled to go off at 0815 local time (0715 UK, 0215 Eastern Standard Time).
A statement from organisers read: “The results of the day’s analyses, combined with the real-time monitoring system of the microbiological quality of the water (Coliminder), show that the quality of the water continues to improve and will be below the World Triathlon thresholds on the day of the competition.”
A summer of Seine controversy
The controversy over the water quality in the Seine comes after a much-vaunted $1.5bn cleanup operation aimed at making the iconic waterway swimmable again after a century. But while it may yet leave a legacy for the future, the project has provided major headaches for competing athletes.
Those early-morning postponements, and constant doubts over whether actual triathlons could be held, have led to strong criticism from some of the sport’s biggest names.
2021 Olympic champion Kristian Blummenfelt said it was “disrespectful putting an event for the athletes in a place where it’s just a gamble.”
Belgian star Marten Van Riel meanwhile bemoaned the chaos in Paris, saying: “If the priority was the health of the athletes this event would have been moved to another location a long time ago. We are just puppets in a puppetshow.”
