Olympic Triathlete Slams Swimming Conditions in the River Seine

Plans to clean up the River Seine for athletes in the Paris Olympics have not exactly gone off without a hitch. Despite the fact that the city spent $1.6 billion to make the water safe to swimmers—with Mayor Anne Hidalgo even swimming in the river herself to demonstrate its cleanliness—practice events were canceled earlier this week and the men's triathlon was postponed from Tuesday to Wednesday due to heavy rains that washed pollutants into the river.

And although officials finally cleared the water on Wednesday for the start of the women's triathlon, the waters—which were reportedly still testing for high levels of E. coli and other bacteria—did not exactly inspire confidence. And one women's triathlete recalled the horrifying conditions she endured during the competition.

Jolien Vermeylen, 30, who is representing Team Belgium in the 2024 Summer Games, later told reporters that she was concerned about getting sick after inadvertently ingesting water during the competition.

"I drank a lot of water, so we’ll know tomorrow if I’m sick or not. It doesn’t taste like Coca-Cola or Sprite, of course," Vermeylen, who finished 24th in the women’s event, told Belgium's VTM TV channel, via Metro UK. "While swimming under the bridge, I felt and saw things that we shouldn’t think about too much."

"The Seine has been dirty for a hundred years, so they can’t say that the safety of the athletes is a priority. That’s bulls--t!" she exclaimed. Swimming in the Seine has in fact been outlawed since 1923 due to pollution. 

"If the race hadn’t taken place, it would have been a disgrace for the organization, for Paris, for France," Vermeylen continued. "It was now or never, and they couldn’t cancel the race completely either. Now they just have to hope that there won’t be too many sick athletes."

She said that even though she took probiotics, that at the end of the day, there wasn't much more she could do. "I had the idea of ​​not drinking water, but yes, it failed," Vermeylen added.

With all of the bad press leading up to and during the Olympics—including Parisians threatening to poop in the river to protest sewage contamination—it remains to be seen how this will impact the city's decision to open the River Seine up to recreational swimmers next year.