Paris 2024 Organisers confident on marathon swimming despite training cancellation
Organisers remain confident the Paris 2024 marathon swimming races will take place in the River Seine as planned despite the cancellation of a training session over water quality concerns.
The 10 kilometre men’s race, scheduled for Friday morning, will feature Wolverhampton’s Toby Robinson and Shropshire’s Hector Pardoe, with the women’s race taking place 24 hours earlier on Thursday.
But a planned training session in the river on Tuesday morning was called off at the request of World Aquatics after tests found above acceptable levels of Enterococci, an indicator of faecal pollution.
In a statement, Games organisers said the decision to cancel the training session had been taken “out of an abundance of caution”.
It said further tests, carried out later on Tuesday morning, had revealed levels of Enterococci to be within the thresholds set by World Aquatics at three out of four checkpoints. A second training session is scheduled for Wednesday morning.
The statement continued: “Further results are expected later today, which will provide a more up to date overview of the water quality in the lead up to the familiarisation swim.
“These results, combined with the weather forecast and forward-looking analysis, allow Paris 2024 to remain highly confident that marathon swimming competitions will go ahead as planned on 8 and 9 August.”
The water quality of the Seine has been a prominent topic during the Games with last week’s men’s triathlon postponed 24 hours due to high levels of pollution.
More than £1billion has been spent in cleaning up the river, in which it has been illegal to swim for more than a century.
While the triathlon and sprint triathlon events have been completed, the marathon swimming event takes place over a much larger area of the river, with competitors staying in the water for longer.
