The murky waters of the Olympic triathlon make for picturesque but risky races

PARIS — The morning rain eased to a drizzle just before 8 a.m. Wednesday in Paris, just as 46 of the world’s strongest women trotted onto the Pont Alexandre III, descended a staircase to a floating dock and plunged into the Seine. be damned.

After years of planning, the construction of a $1.5 billion sewage tank system, months of jitters and a final 24-hour delay as Mother Nature cleaned up the latest sewage overflow as best she could, this elite collection of Olympic distance triathletes did it almost everyone has extrapolated that for 100 years.

Was the river clean? Let’s say clean enough, and leave it at that.

At 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, Olympic organizers and representatives of a regional environmental agency, the city of Paris and the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region tested the Seine’s failure since the weekend downpour that drenched the opening ceremony and sent countless gallons fresh sewage into the urban waterway.

Unlike the previous three days, when organizers canceled two training swims and postponed the men’s race by 27 hours, the river passed the test this time. But officials determined that levels of E.Coli and enterococci are below the risk threshold for bacteria, viruses and other diseases that health experts and the world governing bodies for triathlon and swimming have set for open water competitions.

And so they set off, to the sound of a high-pitched beep, through the murky grey-brown water, on a day when the more immediate dangers turned out to be the slippery pavement that caused a series of spills as cyclists tried to avoid each other and navigate the tight bends of perhaps the most picturesque city trail.

The Eiffel Tower and the Grand Palais rose above the 1,500 meter swim. The triathletes cycled past the Musee D’Orsay and the Assemblee National. The Arc de Triomphe flashed into view as they entered the Champs-Elysées during the seven loops that made up the 25-mile ride. And during the 6.2-mile run, they hit many of the hot spots again.

This was one of those moments that the organizers had dreamed of when they first laid out the plan for these Games ten years ago: a race through the heart of Paris, a video postcard of one of the most breathtaking cities in the world.

And hopefully no one gets sick from swallowing or pouring that river water.

Taylor Knibb of the United States said she crashed during training this weekend and the cuts and scabs were visible all over her left leg. She debated for days whether to take antibiotics before going into the water. She chose not to do that.

She said she simply decided not to think about the pollution and just focus on the race. As she struggled to swim upstream, she thought, “I just want to be done with this.”

Her teammate, Taylor Spivey, said Tuesday that a real problem was the current and swimming back upstream in the second part of the first leg. The current was as strong as she has ever competed in, she said, because triathlons generally don’t take place in rivers.

“It felt like I was on a treadmill,” she says.

None of this came as a surprise to anyone who had anything to do with the location of the race in the Seine. Olympic organizers, Paris officials, the leaders of the World Triathlon, they all wanted their competition in the center of the city and the Games themselves. The alternative would probably have been a lake far outside the city. Nobody felt like that.

Furthermore, the Olympics often serve as a way to free up money for dream projects that would normally never be implemented. Officials have been talking about making the Seine swimmable for more than thirty years. The sewer retention project became one of the legacies of the Games, something that organizers could point to when asking whether it was worth going to all this effort to host the Games.

Next summer, three swimming areas in the Seine will open to the public. That’s the plan anyway, along with three more races on the river before these Games end.

About the racing: Flora Duffy of Bermuda, the defending Olympic champion, led a tight breakaway by a hair after the swim, the segment that is more about surviving and trying to hurt competitors than gaining an edge. The cycling route involved some thinning out, with Duffy sharing front-end work with Maya Kingma of the Netherlands, Georgia Taylor-Brown of Great Britain and hometown favorite Cassandre Beaugrand of France.

The way triathlon has developed, with more and more standout runners migrating to the sport and learning to swim and cycle enough to reach the final stage, this race was always going to come down to running. After 82 minutes, Switzerland’s Julie Derron put on her running shoes and led the race into the final segment.

Beaugrand runs to victory at Pont Alexandre III. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Spivey of the United States was the first of the contenders to slip to the back of the pack. Duffy, who had to push the peloton harder on the bike but couldn’t, and Taylor-Brown dropped out at the end of the first loop, when a leading group of four separated from everyone else.

As so often happens, that made for cruel Olympic math. Four contenders, three medals, with two French women, Beaugrand and Emma Lombardi, hanging out with Derron and Beth Potter from Great Britain as their legs started to turn to mud all over the course.

Derron ran without fear, staying ahead on a still, thick morning with no worries about the headwind, her stride smooth and her shoulders steady. Beaugrand moved onto her shoulder with two miles to go, with Potter and Lombardi trailing stubbornly behind as the bell sounded, signaling the final loop.

Then Beaugrand made her move. Going in, one of the big questions, aside from the health of the River, was whether racing in front of her home fans would inspire Beaugrand or whether the pressure would prove too much of a burden.

In the last kilometer, with thousands of flags waving and the noise happening in the heart of the city, Beaugrand left no doubt, heaving, three, then seven, then 10 and 20 meters ahead and took the tape at the finish and pulled it to her face. before it falls on the carpet. Derron took the silver. Potter took the bronze.

Alex Yee, right, runs out of the Seine towards the next stage of the race during his gold medal run. (Marijan Murat/photo alliance via Getty Images)

In the men’s event, Great Britain’s Alex Yee won a brilliant and dramatic gold medal. The 26-year-old has upgraded the silver he won in Tokyo three years ago to gold after edging out New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde and coming back during the run (obviously).

He becomes only the second British man to take home individual triathlon gold, after Alistair Brownlee did so at the back-to-back Games in London and Rio de Janeiro. Frenchman Leo Bergere made it a multi-event medal double for the hosts.

Italian Alessio Crociani came out on top after completing the energy-sapping 1.5km section at the top of the field before tackling the six-lap, 40km cycle, which was tight throughout. Wilde surged on the second lap of the 10km run, putting him in a strong position for gold.

But in one of the most dramatic finishes of these Games yet, Yee roared back and passed Wilde at the entrance to the Pont Alexandre III with just meters to spare before slowing to a near walk to claim the tape and Olympic glory to take.

“I have so much respect for Hayden and how much he made me dig in there,” Yee said. “He was a great athlete and almost two laps later I thought silver was in the offing, but I owed it to myself to give myself one last chance.”

Although Tuesday was a triumph for organizers, the Seine still has a long way to go.

Three more Olympic races would take place in the river: the mixed triathlon relay and two long-distance swimming races.

At least that is the stated program. Another downpour could turn the triathlon into a duathlon and send the swimming races to the flatwater canoeing venue east of town.

Less glamorous perhaps. But also less polluted.

Ben Burrows contributed reporting.

(Top photo: Michael Steele/Getty Images)