a test The organizers of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games announced today the cancellation of the open water swimming championship, which was scheduled to be held next Monday on the Seine River, due to the heavy rains that occurred in recent hours.
The symbolic river will host the opening ceremony of the most important multi-sport event on the planet, as well as tests of this type of swimming and triathlon.
Heavy rains could increase pollution in the Seine River, and authorities warn they could overwhelm the French capital’s sewage system.
Water levels in the river before the recently canceled event were 349 cubic meters per square meter, well above the 100 required for activities related to the nearby Olympic Games.
This is not the first time that an incident of this kind has occurred, as training for the opening ceremony, which was scheduled for last May, was postponed until June 17, that is, only five weeks before the start of the games.
Although a new water treatment plant was opened at the end of April in the upper part of the river that runs through the Paris region, another important water infrastructure project of great importance for the proper development of the competitions has not yet been commissioned by the symbolic waterway.
This is the giant new underground stormwater facility, located near Austerlitz train station, in eastern Paris, that will store water to prevent it draining into the river. It is expected to be launched during this month.
Cleaning up the Seine River is being touted as one of the major legacies that the 2024 Paris Olympics will leave behind, and Anne Hidalgo, the city’s mayor, has promised to make three places available at the end of the competitions so Parisians can bathe without worry for the next three years. .
French authorities have spent about €1.4 billion upgrading wastewater and stormwater treatment facilities around Paris, aiming to reduce the amount of untreated feces flowing into the river and its main tributary, the Marne.
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