A month out from the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Olympics, the River Seine is still failing water quality tests in waters scheduled to host the open-water marathon swimming events in the second week in August, analysis results released today have confirmed.

The latest tests, completed last week and issued by the office of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, showed levels of the E Coli bacteria, which indicates the presence of faecal matter, are significantly above the upper limits imposed by sports federations, including World Aquatics and World Triathlon.

While Triathlon is held in the first week of the Games in Paris and has a Plan B of ‘wait-and-see’ if things improve, swimming has no wriggle room, the marathon scheduled for August 9 two days before the Closing Ceremony.

Tests conducted on June 18 showed E Coli levels 10 times over the acceptable levels noted in sports rules. None of the results produced a reading below the upper limit of 1,000 colony-forming units per 100 millilitres of water used by World Triathlon.

The readings for enterococci bacteria were less dramatic but still above official safety levels. June’s high readings coincided with an invitation from a protest group for Parisians to defecate in the Seine on Olympic Day, June 23, to highlight questions of safety in a river in which swimming had been barred on safety grounds since 1923, the year before the last time the French capital hosted the Games.

The “Je chie dans la seine le 23 Juin pour … ” protest translates as “I shit in the Seine on June 23 for…”, the second line an interchangeable one naming Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez.

Today, Hidalgo’s office said in a statement: “Water quality remains degraded because of unfavourable hydrological conditions, little sunshine, below-average seasonal temperatures and upstream pollution.”

French authorities have spent €1.4bn in the past decade on clean-up measure in the Seine. Improvements to the Paris sewerage system and construction of state-of-the-art water treatment and storage facilities have been central to the plan.

The weather respects no plan, however. Major storms such as those seen this week in various parts of Europe, are intense enough to overwhelm the French capital’s waste water network, some of which dates back to the 19th century. The overflow carries untreated sewage into the river, E Coli and other bacteria with it.

After months of unusually wet weather, the Seine is flowing up to five times higher up its banks than usual during the summer months, say those monitoring the Seine in Paris.

Organisers are still hopeful that a stretch of dry, sunny weather next month ahead of the Opening on July 26, will be enough to make the Seine swimming friendly.

For more daily swimming news from our monthly Vortex compilation visit SOS:

The Vortex, June 2024 / The Vortex, May 2024 / The Vortex April 2024