Olympics 2024: Organisers confident River Seine water quality won’t stop triathlon

Paris Olympics organisers remain confident the men’s triathlon will race as scheduled at 6pm NZT despite a second training session cancelled due to water quality.

The swimming leg is set to take place in the River Seine. Heavy rain last week, during the Opening Ceremony, hasn’t helped.

The men’s triathlon, featuring Kiwis Hayden Wilde and Dylan McCullough, begins the sport’s programme which is followed by the women’s race tomorrow night and the mixed team relay next week.

Herald Olympics reporter Cheree Kinnear is on the ground in Paris and talked to locals and tourists about whether they’d fancy a dip.

While one British tourist was optimistic, the rest responded with a hard “no”.

One French local said she would never even consider it, despite the billions spent on cleaning it up.”I know people throw things in the river and I will not swim it in ever.”

Organisers do have a plan should the Seine not pass a final water quality test before the men’s event.

“One solution could be to have both men’s and women’s competitions on the same day,” Lambis Konstantinidis, operations director for Paris 2024 told BBC Sport.

“Another possibility would be to use our contingency days that we have built into the programme.

“We also have the possibility to see what can be accommodated when we do the mixed relay - of course, we cannot do too many things on the same day.

“At some point, and it was widely discussed, we also considered the possibility of a duathlon, but this is for us the really, really extreme case when all other fails.

“We are not there yet, and we are confident that tomorrow [Tuesday] will be a good day.”

Hear it as it happens with live commentary of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on GOLD SPORT & iHeartRadio, plus comprehensive coverage on Newstalk ZB.