Paris’ big risk: Was using the River Seine as a venue worth it?

PARIS — As rain hammered down at the Olympic opening ceremony, Paris deputy mayor Pierre Rabadan stood soaking wet in the bleachers. For a brief moment, he felt a sense of worry.

The city had spent €1.5 billion ($1.4 billion) on a project to clean the River Seine. Lately, he had been in charge of ensuring a river-based ceremony featuring hundreds of floating barges could be held safely. Even more difficult, the Seine would feature four Olympic events, in triathlon and marathon swim.

The lasting impact of these Games would be the river itself: Around 100 years ago, Parisians could swim safely in the Seine. The dream was to use the Olympics as a vehicle to command the city into doing that again.

But there was one crucial flaw.

Heavy rainfall at any time could cause levels of E. coli and other bacteria in the Seine to rise, and there was little the city could do to stop it. Paris had gone to great lengths to build and install an underground water basin that could hold enough water to fill 20 Olympic swimming pools, but a substantial rainfall would flood the banks, overwhelm the filtration, and disrupt a signature moment for the city.

As 10,500 of the world’s best athletes floated down the river, around a month’s worth of rain fell in just 36 hours. Rabadan knew the consequences — for both competition and public opinion.

Sure enough, officials canceled a triathlon prep swim due to water quality. Then they canceled another. As organizers met in the dead of night to collect water samples, there were contingency plans to hold a duathlon instead. When marathon prep swim was canceled the following week, organizers were ready to activate a backup site.

The backup plan for the 10k swimming was to have it at the rowing/canoe venue. There was no backup venue for the triathlons, which would have become a duathlon.

ULTIMATELY ALL RACES went ahead at the Seine. The visuals of the Champs-Élysées and the Grand Palais provided a stunning backdrop, and each race ended in a nail-biting finish, but the controversy over the river never went away. One triathlon athlete vomited incessantly after competing. Another was later reported to have an E. coli infection. The truth of what really happened, as usual, fell somewhere in the middle.

“The criticism was not necessary. It was not always constructive,” Rabadan tells ESPN. “Were we right to do it? Was it worth it? Yes, because having athletes swimming in the Seine and having Parisians swimming [there] in the future will help the river.

“It was worth it, even with all the criticism,” he added. Depending on who you talk to, that question — “Was it worth it?” — will provoke different answers. Did the city put the aesthetics of the race above athletes’ health, and will it happen at the Olympics again?

“The legacy should inspire many other cities in the future,” Rabandan said.

The 2024 Paris Olympics have, by nearly all accounts, been a smashing success. Ratings and sponsorship surged. Public transportation ran smoothly. Major controversy was largely avoided. Deciding to use one of the city’s most ubiquitous landmarks — its 777-kilometer-long river — as a venue might have been the Achilles’ heel of the Games.

Concerns about water quality are nothing new to the Olympics, or to open water athletes who compete across the world year-round, often near urban areas. These issues are prevalent everywhere, including North America. The 2016 Rio Olympics were marred by severe pollution — both sewage and trash — at several venues. Tokyo needed drastic measures to clean up its bay, though one athlete’s viral quote saying it “smelled like a toilet” remains in infamy. Water quality at the open water site in Los Angeles at Long Beach’s Alamitos Beach will surely be a talking point over the next four years.

Paris is an interesting case study, both for how organizers handled the events, and the way the issues were covered. World Triathlon has said the E. coli levels on the day of the race were “very good” and only a few athletes later reported gastrointestinal issues, although none of them could be linked back to the river.

The athlete who was reported to have suffered an E. coli infection was Belgium’s Claire Michel. Rumors spread that she was hospitalized, but she later confirmed very little of that information was true. Instead, she saw the medical clinic at the Olympic Village and confirmed she had a stomach virus and not E. coli. Still, when Belgium announced her illness, they added a message urging organizers to “learn lessons” for the future.

Some athletes privately complained to their coaches and federations about gnarliness under the bridges, according to sources. Others were not thrilled with the last-minute nature of alerting; it’s less than ideal for athletes, who thrive on routine, to find out at 4 a.m. whether they are able to compete or not.

“If the priority was the health of the athletes this event would have been moved to another location a long time ago,” Belgian triathlete Marten Van Riel commented on World Triathlon’s Instagram post announcing the postponement of the men’s race.

“We are just puppets in a puppetshow.”

However, many participants felt the worst-case scenarios got overblown, and many cited how spectacular it was to compete in such an iconic venue. When Canadian triathlete Tyler Mislawchuk was caught on camera throwing up several times after finishing ninth, he immediately made global headlines. Days later, a Canadian spokesperson reiterated that Mislawchuk’s sickness had nothing to do with the Seine, and everything to do with Misawlchuk “giving it his absolute all.”

“I’m just a kid from Winnipeg, well, specifically Oak Bluff, where it’s minus-50 [degrees Celsius] in the winter,” Mislawchuk told Triathlon Magazine. “And I’m here at the Summer Olympics. … I got to the start line healthy and gave it my all. You want more, but that’s all I had.”

The Canadian federation had prepared its athletes for potential water quality issues, saying they were aware of the risks posed by water quality in Paris as well as other race sites around the world every year. Canada’s high performance director, Phil Dunne, implemented a prophylaxis protocol from a team of physicians and dieticians to minimize the risk of gastrointestinal illness. A spokesperson said the Canadians had full confidence in World Triathlon and Paris 2024’s mitigation plans to prioritize the health and safety of athletes.

The controversy over the race meant it had more attention and media coverage than any triathlon race in history, with some inside the sport hoping it actually helps grow its audience.

THE OPEN WATER venue for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is Alamitos Beach in Long Beach. Even though water quality issues remain in any urban area, the venue is far better positioned for success. Alamitos Beach is a popular recreational swim area and regularly hosts open water competitions, including the 2022 Americas Triathlon Cup and the 2023 World Triathlon Para Cup. Perhaps most importantly, the Olympics will occur during Southern California’s dry season, which will mitigate the biggest issues in Paris: runoff after a rainstorm.

Heal the Bay, a California-based environmental advocacy group, has consistently graded Alamitos Beaches with A’s and B’s (good for recreational use), including this past summer dry season. Yet during a 2023-24 winter that saw record rain, those beaches received C’s and F’s. Long Beach is a shipping hub and houses the largest container terminal in America. Alamitos Beach has been prone to sewage spills — including a 47,000-gallon issue, due to infrastructure damage from rainfall, that closed all swimming areas in February.

Long Beach spokesperson Kevin Lee said the city has been committed to continual improvement of recreational water for a very long time, implementing major projects over the last couple of decades associated with stormwater management, green infrastructure, dredging, low flow diversion, trash capture and watershed projects. Lee said there are plans in the works for a trash collection barge to keep coastal beaches cleaner by capturing more debris as it comes down to the water.

“The water along our beaches is ready to welcome in incredible athletes from all over the world,” Lee said.

As for Paris, city officials are hoping they can unveil three areas on the Seine next year for public swimming each summer. They see it first and foremost as a tool to help cool residents down during more frequent heat waves, as well as provide free access to swimming.

“For us, being able to bring back better water quality is the biggest legacy we can imagine,” Rabadan said.

Uncertainty over the river won’t end, though. Daily water samples will still be taken, and increased pollution will cause temporary closures. It means another legacy will be Parisians having their own Olympic triathlete experience: They will look outside the morning after a heavy rainfall and wonder whether it is safe to swim.