It was "disgusting," Dutch triathletes say about swimming in the Seine

The Dutch triathletes did not have a good time swimming in the Seine River in Paris on Wednesday. “Swimming in the Seine was disgusting,” Rachel Klamer said after finishing 14th in the race. The water was dirty, and the conditions were unfair, she told RTL Nieuws. “A lot of swimmers came out of the water behind me who are actually faster. The swimming was really a lottery.”

The triathlon was scheduled for Tuesday, but postponed because the water of the Seine was too dirty. According to the organizers, last weekend’s rain made the sewers overflow into the Seine. A few dry and sunny days later, they considered the water clean enough to go ahead on Wednesday.

“We’ll see if I get sick. I really swallowed a lot of water,” Klamer said after the race. “It’s a very beautiful place, but it was actually just not fair.”

She referred to the Seine’s current and how the swimmers handled it. According to her, everyone wanted to swim through the middle on the way there and exactly next to the wall on the way back.

That caused a lot of contact in the water. “Shoulders, legs, feet. I was almost pulled back,” Klaver said. “A lot of swimmers came out of the water behind me who are actually faster. The swimming was really a lottery.”

Maya Kingma, who came in seventh, told NOS that she tried to ignore the challenging circumstances. “I didn’t think much about it. But it is a shame that you take such a risk at the biggest event in the world,” she said. “I’m glad the triathlon went ahead, but having so much tension is not something I can repeat.”