An Olympic swimmer pulled out of Friday’s 10-kilometer swim rather than face whatever might be lurking in the Seine river.
French officials sought to clean up the polluted Seine before the Olympics, but poor water quality has emerged as a theme throughout the Games.
“While swimming under the bridge, I felt and saw things that we shouldn’t think about too much,” Jolien Vermeylen, a Belgian swimmer, said on July 31.
Swedish swimmer Victor Johansson said with that as the backdrop, he’s not taking the plunge in what would have been his final event on the advice of Swedish medical staff.
“After we have weighed their recommendation with all the risks that exist, it felt like the best decision is to drop out. Therefore, it has now been decided that I will not swim,” Johansson told a Swedish media outlet, according to SwimSwam.
“There is a lot of information that has been flying around, but what we know for sure is that people have become ill. So even though the levels (intestinal bacteria E-coli) have gone down, it didn’t feel good to start,” he said.
Johansson said that swimmers competing in the triathlon were impacted by the water’s quality.
“The triathletes were in the Seine for about 20 minutes, and despite the short time, some got sick,” Johansson said, according to Reuters.
Swedish triathlete Tilda Mansson was sick after competing in the Seine last week.
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Johansson said that by comparison, triathletes are in the water a much shorter time than long-distance swimmers.
“We have to be in the water for two hours,” he said
“You swallow anywhere from 0 to 250 milliliters of water per hour, so at worst I would have been able to come up from the Seine with half liter of water,” he said.
Swedish Olympic Committee doctor Lykke Tamm supported the decision.
“After careful consideration of all the factors surrounding Victor, my recommendation is that he should not swim in the Seine as it stands now,” Tamm said, according to SwimSwam.
“Health is always most important.”
Johansson is not the first athlete to skip competing due to the quality of the Seine, according to Fox News.
Belgium withdrew its triathlon mixed relay team on Monday due to fears that swimming in the Seine would make them all sick.
