Despite $1.53 billion having been budgeted to wash up the perennially polluted Seine, reviews swirled for months main as much as the Paris Games about whether or not it could be secure sufficient to carry the swimming leg of the triathlons and the 10-kilometer marathons within the river.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo went for a swim July 17 and declared France’s most well-known physique of water good to go?however it’s been type of a s–t present for the reason that Olympics started.

On Monday, July 29, swims for the triathletes to familiarize themselves with the Seine had been canceled, officers citing poor water high quality ranges attributable to run-off from the weekend’s heavy rains (which noticeably began in the course of the July 26 Opening Ceremony).

The males’s triathlon was then postponed a day and rescheduled to observe the ladies’s occasion on July 31 after organizers deemed micro organism ranges too excessive for a secure swim.

Both triathlons had been held July 31, day-of exams discovering that E. coli and intestinal enterococci ranges had been low sufficient to qualify the water as “excellent quality,” per the European Union’s Bathing Water Directive.

But hypothesis that the water wasn’t secure resumed after two athletes who competed within the triathlon dropped out of the mixed-relay competitors, citing respective sicknesses (neither of which have been definitively linked to swimming within the Seine).

The ladies’s and males’s 10km are nonetheless scheduled for Aug. 8 and 9, however practices had been canceled Aug. 6 after exams confirmed micro organism ranges had been as soon as once more too excessive.