Athletistic / Triathlon. The referee of the triathlon competition at the Olympic Games in Paris (France), Alexei Kalinin, said that it was highly likely that the competition would not take place on the Seine. Today, August 4, it was learned that the training swim in the Seine was again canceled due to poor water quality.

Tomorrow, August 5, a mixed relay is planned there.

“After the successful holding of the individual triathlon competitions in one day on July 31, the triumph of the event gradually fades and the main issue becomes swimming again, now in the team relay.

Official swimming practices on August 3 and 4 were cancelled due to poor water quality and increased currents. The Seine as a whole proved to be a very difficult place.

After individual competitions, in which the athletes’ swimming resembled more the fierce struggle of salmon against the current upstream of the river, the technical delegates decided to reconfigure the swimming leg.

In order to reduce the influence of the strong counter-current in the middle of the Seine, the athletes will swim in the relay in the same way as in the individual competitions (the initial plan was for a clockwise swim with access to a pontoon in the centre of the Seine river).

In this regard, the movement pattern during the handover also had to be reconfigured.

Triathletes’ training swim in the Seine for the 2024 Olympics is cancelled again

Curiosities. The day before, the pontoon was not installed in order to carry out the procedure of selecting the starting locations by the teams. The captain of the tugboat, who deploys the pontoon every morning at 4 o’clock, simply did not show up and did not answer calls. Considering that such operations require a license and special skills, there was no one to replace him quickly.

Luckily he later got in touch to apologise and say it was Friday etc but it won’t happen again. If you can somehow choose a starting location without formal swimming training then without a pontoon it’s just not possible.

The procedure was postponed until the next day. The organizers, just in case, hired another captain and on the morning of August 4, the pontoon was in place.

So we are all waiting for a decision whether tomorrow there will be a relay team competition with swimming or whether it will be postponed to August 6, when the start will take place in any case in triathlon or duathlon format.

PS In our opinion, open water swimming competitions will definitely not take place in the Seine,” Kalinin wrote on his telegram channel.



Athletistic