[HN Gopher] Olympic men's triathlon postponed due to river pollu...
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Olympic men's triathlon postponed due to river pollution
Author : rntn
Score : 27 points
Date : 2024-07-30 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| The local health and triathlon authorities here set an e coli
| limit of ~100 instead of the 900 in the article.
|
| We have the luxury of vast amounts pf unpolluted freshwater
| however, so we can be more stringent. I can't imagine many bodies
| of water in Europe have less than 100 units of e coli.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It's ok, they have a plan B, make it a duathlon instead of a
| triathlon. After all it only costed 1.4 billion euros to the tax
| payers, no biggie
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| It's not like the investment will have been in vain even in the
| triathlon is cancelled. Paris would have had to make them to
| comply with the upcoming European regulation on urban
| wastewater anyway (ok they would have had quite some time to do
| so but still) [1]. Plus, if we ranked all the investments made
| for the Olympic Games in history by how useful they were, I'm
| fairly sure a waste water holding basin would do pretty well.
|
| [1] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/water/urban-
| wastewat...
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| Building the infrastructure to prevent raw sewage from spilling
| into the river after rain storms seems like a worthy goal for
| the tax payers, regardless of hitting the Olympic deadline.
|
| And it's a goal of Parisian officials that has predated the
| Olympics by at least 30 years:
|
| > In 1990, then Paris mayor and later French President Jacques
| Chirac declared he would launch a major cleanup of the Seine,
| and swim in it
|
| https://time.com/6261729/seine-clean-up-paris-olympics-2024/
| nradov wrote:
| This was so predictable, and so unnecessary. The Paris Olympics
| officials have known for years that there was no guarantee that
| the Seine would meet water quality requirements. They had plenty
| of time to select an alternate backup site near Paris. The fact
| that they failed to do so was pure vanity and politics. There are
| a number of other bodies of water that have hosted successful
| triathlons in recent years. The surfing events were way off in
| Tahiti so it obviously wasn't a requirement to do everything
| within Paris. I feel bad for the athletes who trained hard for
| years only to be jerked around at the last minute by lazy and
| incompetent officials.
| rat9988 wrote:
| They didn't not fail. They have alternatives ready. And second,
| the goal was not only to clean water, but to make it
| sustainable long term. That's a lot of work on the foundations.
| It is foreseen to end in 2025, and I'm happy they did it. For
| these games, they said beforehand, it's only possible if it
| doesn't rain much. No luck. But I'm happy they took on this
| endeavour.
| below43 wrote:
| I was in Paris a few weeks ago after days of no rain and
| stood watching the river from a bridge. It looked absolutely
| filthy - very grubby, with the occasional piece of rubbish
| floating by (pretty much what you would expect a river in a
| city to look like). And that's before adding large amounts of
| rain (which must increase sewage and farm waste flow into the
| river substantially). I suspect the river may one day be
| clean, but I think there's a lot of work needed upstream
| before it's ever going to be in a suitable, safe state to
| ingest while swimming.
| nradov wrote:
| The organizers absolutely failed. Practice swim sessions
| already had to be cancelled. Their "alternative" is to
| postpone the events to another day and there's no guarantee
| that the Seine will meet water quality requirements. The
| other "alternative" they mentioned is to cancel the swim and
| only do the run and bike portions. That would be completely
| stupid and turn it into a different sport (duathlon rather
| than triathlon).
|
| Improving long term water quality is a nice goal but has
| nothing to do with the Olympics. Let's not confuse the issue
| and make excuses for laziness and incompetence. Competent
| organizers would have had a backup alternate venue lined up
| years in advance. No one should be happy about this failure.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| I think the investments and political images generated by the
| Olympics are a lot (and I mean a lot) more important than
| having two dozen guys race to a line.
|
| Clearly the actual sport is subsidiary to the overall nature of
| the event in the Olympics. That's why everything surrounding
| the sport takes so much space.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| But the mayor took a swim in it! That wouldn't be a load of horse
| shit would it?
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