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For all the gold and glory of the first week of the Paris Olympics, one major headache for organisers has simply refused to fade: the River Seine.
After days — indeed, months — of concerns about water quality, their worst fears were realised when the men’s triathlon — due to be held today — was postponed until Wednesday.
But an even bigger problem looms: if the situation does not improve, there is the doomsday scenario of both races being scheduled for Friday as duathlons, with the swimming event removed entirely.
The Athletic analyses how we reached this point, and what impact that decision could have on the event.
Why could the triathlon be changed into a duathlon?
Put simply, the water quality in the Seine, where the swimming part of the triathlon is due to take place, is deemed to be unsafe.
Despite pre-Games investment of more than £1.2billion (€1.4bn) to clean up the river, levels of E. coli and other bacteria in the water spiked to dangerous levels following heavy rainfall at the end of last week.
Paris’ combined sewer system, which sees both wastewater and stormwater travel through the same pipes, means that large quantities of rain can make pipes exceed capacity, with untreated wastewater overflowing into the Seine.
With thunderstorms and heavy rain expected from 6pm local time on Tuesday evening, there is further risk of contaminated water.
The men’s triathlon is now due to take place on Wednesday morning (10.45am French time; 5.45am ET) following the conclusion of the women’s event (7am French time; 2am ET), but only if the water passes safety tests.
Tests of the River Seine are taken in August 2023 (Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images)
If it fails again, organisers could need to resort to staging the events on the reserve day on Friday, but with the triathlons becoming duathlons — just made up of the cycling and running events.
This would be an unprecedented change at such a major event, although there were water quality problems in Paris a year ago for the test events. The mixed team relay and para-triathlon both became duathlons.
After that, World Triathon said that the contingency plan for Paris, if water quality was poor, was to make the triathlon a duathlon but insisted that was “an unlikely event”.
Mayor Anne Hidalgo, and a few dozen volunteers, felt comfortable swimming in the Seine before the Games began to showcase the improved water quality but heavy storms such as the ones witnessed in Paris last week always threatened to be disruptive.
Members of the public joined Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo in swimming in the Seine earlier this month (Victoria Valdivia/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
How does this change the event?
Completely.
An Olympic triathlon consists of a 1,500m open-water swim followed by a 40-kilometre cycle and ending with a 10km run. Typically a duathlon would entail a 40km cycle and a 10km run, but if the triathlon was to become a duathlon, there would be a 5km run in place of the 1.5km swim to start, with the rest remaining the same.
“Physiologically, you’re coming onto the bike with more fatigued legs (after a run instead of a swim),” says Andrew Woodroffe, a performance triathlon coach. “Swimming tires you out before you get on the bike but it’s not the same speed or intensity which these athletes will be running at.
“If you remove the swim, it completely changes the dynamic of the event. Running is what damages the legs. The men will run well under 15 minutes, they’re running so fast. When it comes to the final run, their legs will be fried.
“The fastest swimmers don’t tend to win because they’re not as good runners. Stopping the swim makes it more of a race and maybe makes it more of a level playing field. But it’s simply a different sport.”
Mark Buckingham, a triathlon coach and former duathlon world medallist who is the national coach for Triathlon Ireland, agrees. “Not many athletes go in with the mindset that it might be a duathlon, so it’ll catch people off guard,” he said. “Quite a few will have trained specifically so their swim will be on point.
“In a typical triathlon, the strongest swimmers would swim as hard as they can, jump on the bike, get a small group working together and try to create a gap and hang on in the run.
“In a duathlon, the best runners will be at the front and there will be a bigger pack on the bike because the fast runners have already outrun the slower runners and they have no incentive to break away because they might as well sit in the pack wheel-to-wheel (and expend less energy than breaking away) and just wait for the second run.”
What has been the reaction?
“It’s a mess,” says Woodroffe. “This is the Olympic triathlon. It will make it a bit of a mockery and it’s brutal for the athletes. It’s very amateur. You wouldn’t expect it at the Olympic Games. It’ll be talked about for a very long time, but it won’t make duathlon a more popular sport.”
Buckingham says it would be “sad” if it becomes a duathlon and points out that it would ensure this year’s Olympic event would “forever have an asterisk next to it.”
After the success of the Tokyo Games three years ago, when a mixed relay event was added to the triathlon programme, there are fears this would set the sport back and anger over the damage to the sport’s image.
“It’s terrible for triathlon,” Buckingham added. “We want to see it in the Olympic Games. Moving forward, it might wake up organisers to the potential water quality at other events and make them plan more effectively. It seems like every other week we hear of dirty water athletes have to swim in. A duathlon is not even close to a reasonable contingency.”
World Triathlon president Marisol Casado has suggested there is a “60-40” chance of the triathlon events taking place on Wednesday.
“We really want this to happen. But, of course, we really thought that this recuperation [the improvement in the water quality] would be faster than it was,” she said. “We were shocked this morning when we saw that it was not as fast as we wanted.”
World Triathlon president Marisol Casado (Andrej Isakovic/AFP via Getty Images)
Aurelie Merle, executive director of sports competitions at Paris 2024, added: “The priority of the IOC, of Paris 2024, is for the health of the athletes, and the tests that were carried out on the Seine were not sufficient on the entirety of the course.”
Who could the format change benefit?
Changing the race’s format could dramatically alter the prospects of who comes away with gold medals.
“Hayden Wilde from New Zealand and Morgan Pearson from the USA run well,” says Woodroffe. “Alex Yee and Kristian Blummenfelt will take the run out very fast. It could be a lot closer on the bike. The difference will be whose legs are cooked for the 10km.
“On the women’s side, the race would split up a lot more because the running times are much wider apart. It would be less of a spectacle for the women.”
Buckingham says, inevitably, the stronger runners in the triathlon would benefit from the elimination of the swimming event.
“Yee, Blummenfelt and Wilde — the medallists from Tokyo — it wouldn’t affect them as much because they are all strong runners,” he said. “The same with Beth Potter and Cassandre Beaugrand in the women’s race — they finished first and second in the test event last year and are exceptional runners.
Britain’s Alex Yee won the test event last year (Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)
“Pearson from the USA runs really well. He might make it into the mix. He might soak up that first run better and may not have quite the same problems with cramp, heat stress and fatigue, which they will all suffer from. It subtly brings one or two people into it more. Of the top 10, about 70 per cent would be the same with a duathlon or a triathlon.
“It will change the result but the favourites will still be favourites. In the women’s triathlon, Leonie Periault, who is a class athlete, would be more in contention for a medal. The athletes who can soak up the first run tend to do the best.”
World Triathlon is putting some of the blame on climate change — is that fair?
Sort of. The heating of the planet due to human-induced climate change is increasing the intensity of rainfall and that results in more polluted rivers.
“The climate has changed that we are facing. In some cases we have waves that are too high, in other moments we have electrical storms,” Casado said.
Merle also pointed to the unusually large total rainfall. “We had meteorological events beyond our control,” she said. “The equivalent to July’s rainfall fell in just 36 hours. It’s taken time for the river to get back to normal.”
That could not be accounted for in a matter of days, but the state of the Seine over time is something that was within the control of the city, hence the decision to spend so much trying to clean up the river and prevent discharges from reaching it in the first place.
Could the 2024 Paris Olympics have found an alternative venue?
Many athletes, present and former, have been dismayed at the lack of a contingency plan involving another venue.
“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 wrote on Instagram.
He added that organisers had been “disrespectful to the years of preparation of the athletes and to all our fans that were going to watch live or on TV. What an appearance for triathlon on the biggest scene.”
Those sentiments were echoed by Vicky Holland, who won bronze for Great Britain at the 2016 Olympics.
“A duathlon would be the worst-case scenario,” Holland told the BBC. “That would be a really disappointing outcome. It is disappointing that there wasn’t another contingency in place, but a backup venue feels like an obvious option.”
The marathon swimming event may be relocated to the rowing course at Vaires-sur-Marne should the Seine still be considered unsafe, but that would be less practical for a triathlon.
“There’s a spot 40km from Paris where they’ve done open-water swimming,” says Woodroffe. “There’s a big triathlon series — the French Grand Prix — who do an event a few kilometres from Paris with an open swim. A lot of talk within triathlon circles has been, ‘Why didn’t they just use this venue?’
“They could swim there, then cycle into the city centre, because they want the city-centre thing. The Seine seems to have been a passion project. If you’ve got the surfing in Tahiti and French Polynesia, then you can probably do the triathlon a few kilometres outside Paris.”
(Top photo: David Davies/PA Images via Getty Images)
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Courtesy : https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5665630/2024/07/30/paris-2024-olympic-triathlon-duathlon/