PARIS − “I think I can grab you a cup if you want to taste it,” triathlete Taylor Knibb generously offered the media as she stood near the banks of the Seine River, dripping with sweat after two hours of running, cycling and ingesting water that nobody has been allowed to swim in – much less drink – for over 100 years.
Non, merci. Thanks for the offer, though.
The only water we’re drinking over here on Germophobe Island is Evian and Perrier. Oh, and we’re washing our hands, too. After a couple of squirts of sanitizer.
Which, to be clear, is something you should absolutely do after using the restroom. The triathletes want you to know that after American Seth Rider, in response to questions about swimming the dirty, dirty Seine, said he would refrain from washing his hands to build up a tolerance to e. Coli before competing in a triathlon that had been delayed because – yep – the Seine was still a cesspool of bacteria after weekend rains swept a little more sewage into the river.
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“I think the public took that seriously,” Rider’s teammate Taylor Spivey said after she finished 10th in the women’s individual. “That was a joke. Please wash your hands.”
And so, after 100 years of dreaming that the Seine could one day be sanitary enough for humans to swim in and an investment of 1.4 billion euros to make it possible for these Olympics, it has finally happened.
Now we … wait to see whether they were right? Better the athletes than us.
“Hopefully I can handle some e. Coli,” Rider said after he finished 29th. “Because I swallowed so much water out there. Probably everyone did.”
Of course, what a lot of us germ hysterics – i.e., normal people − don’t totally understand is that this is pretty much a way of life for high-level triathletes. Dirty water is everywhere. So they take their precautionary probiotics, get a good night of sleep, wake up early in the morning and do what they do.
To these athletic freaks, we’re the weird ones to be so fixated on the water going into their bodies. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to mess with us.
“I’m here to race,” Rider said. “I don’t really care what the water is like.”
Without getting into the nitty-gritty of the science, the basic idea here is that Paris’ wastewater went into the Seine for decades and decades. So the French being French had this big, grand idea to clean it up and make it useable for the Olympics, because the entire idea behind the Paris Games was to use its iconic landmarks as a tableau for sporting events.
Sure, there were undoubtedly other places in France where they could do a triathlon. But what would be more spectacular than seeing these ridiculously fit, maniacal people jumping out of the Seine, hopping on bikes to cycle past the Musee D’Orsay and national assembly before running to the finish line over the iconic Pont Alexandre bridge?
As president Emmanuel Macron has posted several times on social media this week, “C’est la France!”
This is France!
Nobody does it bigger.
So what they did is spend a few years building what’s basically a big swimming pool that would in theory prevent Paris’ sewer system − first built in 1370 and updated several times over the centuries – from spilling into the river.
This has been a huge political issue leading up to the Olympics, with the mayor of Paris even taking a dip in the Seine recently to show that the plan was working. And maybe it will! By next year, we may see thousands of Parisians floating blissfully down the river on a hot summer day. A clean Seine would be quite a legacy project coming out of the Paris Games, and one that actually improves the lives of citizens.
But, well, let’s just say there are still a few vulnerabilities.
Like heavy rain! Lo and behold, that’s what we got over the weekend. So when they tested the water before the scheduled men’s individual race on Tuesday, there were too many CFUs – colony-forming units – of the bad stuff to safely swim. There was, for a moment, even some concern that the triathlon may become a duathlon.
Meanwhile, the athletes just wanted to swim.
“It was nice for me that I had a media blackout, and it was very clear that I wasn’t going to talk about that topic because talking about it wouldn’t change anything,” Knibb said. “It’s out of my control, so that’s something I think everyone can learn from. Do what you’re good at and don’t get distracted.”
To sum up: Yeah, they’re not like us.
Now, that doesn’t mean there was nothing wrong with the Seine water when they tested it before dawn Wednesday when – uh oh – another thunderstorm swept through the city.
But, well, it tested good enough. We think. Game on.
And when the triathletes jumped in, their concern went from biology to hydrology – as in, ridiculous currents that some athletes said was like swimming on a treadmill. At one point, Spivey thought officials might even stop the race or pull them out of the river after one lap.
“The only question I’ve been asked, basically, is about water quality and it seems to be the question at every Olympics so I didn’t really care about it,” Spivey said. “Honestly, the current was more of a concern to me. It was insane. It was shocking.”
In the end, the triathlon went off without a hitch. We’ll find out in a few days whether that bacteria will end up, um, back in the Paris sewer system in an unintended form because a whole lot of it was swallowed by a whole lot of Olympians on Wednesday.
Hopefully their immune systems are ready for a gold-medal performance.
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