Tony Estanguet confirms a plan B if the Seine is not clean enough by the end of July – Libération

For the freestyle marathon, the organizing committee prepared the canoeing and rowing site in Vaires-sur-Marne. For the Olympic triathlon swimming competition, it is a bit more complex.

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This time, it’s clear: there are alternative solutions for the Olympic events in the Seine and it’s Tony Estanguet who says so. For months, triathletes and open water swimmers have been worried about the quality of the river water, which is not up to par in late July and early August. This saga has continued to rebound with the bad weather in recent weeks, but on Thursday, the Paris city hall and the Ile-de-France prefecture announced that the swimmability criteria were “in line with the thresholds defined by the European directive over six days” at the end of June. Finally.

On the team Friday, the president of Paris 2024 explained the text: “The quality of the water is improving even though we have much higher flows than normal. The decline is announced, which will help to strengthen the system. We are confident in our ability to organize competitions in the Seine.” If, for one reason or another (mainly weather), we fall below the thresholds, there is a plan B but only for the freestyle events. For the triathlon, the date of the events can be postponed by a few days, but only once.

“We have contingency plans to postpone competitions, which allows us to be relatively calm in the event of rainy spells. And as a last resort, the regulations provide that we can switch to duathlon,” Estanguet says. “For marathon swimming, to guarantee athletes that the competitions will be held, we have instructed a reserve site, the canoeing and rowing site in Vaires-sur-Marne, which offers all the characteristics to host these events.”

The triathlon events are scheduled to take place on July 30, 31 and August 5, and the marathon swimming events on August 8 and 9. After the publication of the encouraging results, despite a river flow “four to six times” higher “than the usual summer flow”, the deputy for the Olympic Games and the Seine at Paris City Hall, Pierre Rabadan, considered that these results were “rather a good omen for the future”.