Paris Olympics 2024: The Seine river (AP)
The health risks of sending triathletes and marathon swimmers into the long-polluted Seine after a $1.5 billion project to clean the water was among the biggest issues for Olympics organizers
The River Seine has been in the midst of quite some controversy lately multiple athletes have raised concerns surrounding the qustionable cleanliness of the river, that has led to cases of infection.
And one man who went viral for the same was Canadian triathlete Tyler Mislawchuk, who reportedly vomited 10 times throughout the Men’s Triathlon race on Wednesday.
“For me, whether I was fourth or 55th it doesn’t really matter. I tried to win a medal and I went out there and was basically in third place with the two French guys for five and a half or 6 km,” the three-time Olympian told Triathlon Magazine.
“At my last Olympics there was the injury and with all the stuff that happened there was a lot of ‘what ifs,’” said Mislawchuck, who finished 15th in both the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 games.
“I have no ‘what ifs’ on the day, I went for it, it was absolutely everything. I vomited 10 times after the race … it got hot in the last laps,” Mislawchuk said.
This isn’t the only case of infection that has arisen at the Olympics.
Three days after the men’s triathlon at the Paris Olympics, the Swiss team said Saturday one of its athletes has a stomach infection and will not compete in the mixed relay event.
It was “impossible to say” if Adrien Briffod’s gastrointestinal infection is linked to water quality in the River Seine, the Switzerland Olympic team said in a statement.
No other cases of Olympic triathletes with stomach problems had been found among other countries that took part in the individual races, the Swiss team’s doctor Hanspeter Betschart said.
The health risks of sending triathletes and marathon swimmers into the long-polluted Seine after a $1.5 billion project to clean the water was among the biggest issues for Olympics organizers — and could yet be the best games legacy for the city of Paris.
French president Emmanuel Macron had promised to swim in the Seine to show it is safe and the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, went in the water one week before the Olympics opened.
As a precaution for the future, Olympic organisers cancelled part of the triathlon training in the River Seine planned for Saturday, saying heavy rain was likely to have made the waterway too polluted to swim in.
Only the running and cycling elements of the triathlon mixed relay training will take place, Paris 2024 organisers announced in a statement.
(with agency inputs)
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