Belgian triathlete Jolien Vermeylen has shared her thoughts on swimming in the Seine River and it turns out it was as gross as we all expected.
The Olympic triathlon went ahead in the Seine River earlier this week, despite concerns over the water quality growing in recent days due to torrential rain in Paris. While the water was deemed safe enough for swimming after last-minute tests, it certainly wasn’t a swim at Bondi Beach.
The 30-year-old, who came 24th in the race with a time of 1:59.44, said she took prebiotics before the race to minimise any health concerns but “couldn’t do more” to prepare.
“I drank a lot of water, so we’ll know tomorrow if I’m sick or not,” Vermeylen said after the race. “It doesn’t taste like Coca-Cola or Sprite, of course.”
She continued to explain that she didn’t plan on drinking the water, but it wasn’t that simple.
“I had the idea of not drinking water, but yes, it failed.”
Vermeylen also slammed organisers’ claims that athlete safety was paramount, citing that they had a hundred years to fix the water quality in the river.
“The Seine has been dirty for a hundred years, so they can’t say that the safety of the athletes is a priority. That’s bullshit!”
The project to clean up the Seine has been highly controversial after organisers dropped a whopping €1.4 billion (approximately $2.3 million) fixing the issue. For the last 100+ years, swimming in the Seine has been banned because of the water quality.
Less than two weeks before the start of the Olympics, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo swam in the river to prove the water was clean enough for athletes to swim in. However, last-minute water tests prompted the event to be delayed over unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria.
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