Belgian Olympic triathlete Jolien Vermeylen appeared horrified after being forced to compete in the filthy waters of the River Seine during the 2024 games Wednesday.
Despite spending $1.5 billion and working for months to try and clean the Seine, officials at the Olympics were forced to postpone the triathlon until water quality testing revealed acceptable levels of grossness. On Wednesday, the waters were considered clean enough for the competition. But one athlete says she “felt and saw things” she doesn’t “want to think about” while swimming in the river, according to Metro.
“I drank a lot of water, so we’ll know tomorrow if I’m sick or not,” Vermeylen told a local news outlet. “It doesn’t taste like Coca-Cola or Sprite, of course.”
Olympics Opening Ceremony Goes Viral Because Everyone Is Like ‘WTF Even Is This?’ https://t.co/NuwNyYy4ql
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“While swimming under the bridge, I felt and saw things that we shouldn’t think about too much,” she continued. “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 bulls***!” (RELATED: ‘Malicious Acts’ Wreak Havoc At Olympics)
Vermeylen says she took precautions to avoid getting sick from the water. She unfortunately ended up drinking a fair amount of it during the competition. “If the race hadn’t taken place, it would have been a disgrace for the organisation, for Paris, for France,” she noted. “It was now or never, and they couldn’t cancel the race completely either. Now they just have to hope that there won’t be too many sick athletes.”
“I took pro-biotics, I drank my Yakult, I couldn’t do more. I had the idea of not drinking water, but yes, it failed,” she said.
Athletes dive into the Seine river to start the swimming stage of the men’s individual triathlon at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in central Paris on July 31, 2024. (Photo by David Goldman / POOL / AFP) (Photo by DAVID GOLDMAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Athletes swim in the Seine river for the triathlon event at the Olympic Games in Paris, July 31, 2024.Natation des athletes dans la Seine pour l epreuve du triathlon masculin des jeux olympiques a Paris, le 31 juillet 2024. JO. (Photo by Laure Boyer / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP) (Photo by LAURE BOYER/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
There are so many failures in this situation it is hard to know where to start.
Despite knowing of the utterly repugnant conditions of the Seine River for the last century, it is kind of shocking that Olympic officials went ahead with the race instead of finding a better alternative. How lazy and egotistical do you have to be to do something like that? (RELATED: Video Shows Brazilian Olympian Expressing Her Love For Jesus While Winning Medal)
I am not much of an athlete but I’ve heard they are very into health and fitness. If this is the case, why did they agree to put their bodies in a potentially deadly body of water? For a medal? Really? Have we gotten so flipping stupid as a species that we’re forcing the world’s top athletes to risk their physical health to win a piece of metal? To me, this poses the age-old question: would you jump off a cliff if everyone else was doing it?
Guys, we’ve got to ask ourselves where our priorities are, because I don’t think this type of stupid behavior is sustainable.
