No sleep, Luciano Pavarotti sings at the opening of the Turin 2006 Winter Games and nobody sleeps in the world of triathlon, minute by minute, watching the quantity of enterococci and escherichia coli that contaminate the water of the treacherous Seine after the rains. This Tuesday, the planned familiarization training sessions were suspended again. The men’s event is scheduled for Wednesday 30th at eight o’clock in the morning (1,500 metres in water with troublesome currents; 40 kilometres by bicycle through the streets of Paris and 10 kilometres on foot through the same area), but it will not be until just four hours before, at 3.30 in the dark, that the final bacteriological analyses will be carried out to decide that it is not dangerous for one’s health to bathe in the waters that flow under the Pont Alexandre III, where the starting pontoons are located, with a flow of 360,000 litres per second at a speed of 1.4 kilometres per hour on the left bank and four per hour in the centre. The athletes and the world will not be officially informed of the results until four o’clock.
“The uncertainty about whether they will compete has no effect on their routine. This situation is not new. In almost all triathlons, not everything is confirmed until the last minute,” explains José Antonio Bodoque, physiotherapist for the Spanish team. “They will act as if they are sure they will compete. The same programme as every day in Paris. They will have dinner at 7.30pm, go to bed early and get up at four, like every day.”
The contingency plan provides that if swimming is not possible, the competition will be held on August 2, next Friday, and if by then the heat, which has already begun to scorch the docks on the banks, has not finished off the faeces, the triathlon will be converted into a duathlon (5,000 metres running through the streets; 40 kilometres by bicycle and 10,000 metres running on foot again), a solution that leaves a bad taste in the mouths of the athletes. “We all want a triathlon. The duathlon is another sport,” says Miriam Casilla, the voice of the athletes from Badajoz, for whom Paris will be her third Olympic Games. “If swimming were suspended, it would be bad for everyone, although it could benefit some people personally, because it damages the image of triathlon. In any case, health comes first.”
Athletes are recalling the collective gastroenteritis that struck them at the World Cup event in Sunderland (UK) last summer. More than 57 participants fell ill after swimming at Roker Beach on the weekend of 29 and 30 July. The athletes who showed symptoms complained of nausea and diarrhoea.
“It’s nothing new that the swimming event is suspended,” explains Antonio Serrat, the Spanish representative in the men’s event, “although not in a competition of this level.” It would be the first time that a triathlon, an Olympic sport since Sydney 2000, could not be held in its entirety. It is not so strange, however, that a high-level triathlon suspends the swimming event due to contamination. Paris already had to suspend some of the test events last August and the 2023 European Championship won in Madrid by David Castro was actually a duathlon, since the swimming event scheduled for the Casa de Campo could not be held due to high faecal contamination after a major storm that hit the capital.
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