Reassuring for the future. Pierre Rabadan, the city of Paris’ deputy sports director, explained to AFP the day after the cancellation of the open water swimming test event scheduled for Saturday August 5 and Sunday August 6 in the Seine: the water quality in the river was in fact sufficient on Sunday to authorize the competition. An analysis was carried out during the morning. “But the laboratory results didn’t arrive until today (Monday August 7), said Pierre Rabadan. We were below the thresholds at all reading points.” The test event for the Paris 2024 Games could therefore have gone ahead. But the last water analysis, taken into account by the COJO, the French Swimming Federation (FFN) and World Aquatics to make a final decision, was 24 hours old. It had been carried out on Friday night and revealed results above the standards for an open water competition. Pierre Rabadan regretted that the results had been delayed, and that the event had lost out. But the latest analyses, and above all the end of the heavy precipitation and the rise in temperatures, give grounds for optimism for the second test event in the Seine, the triathlon and para-triathlon event scheduled to take place from August 17 to 20.
