The rehearsal for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which was to be held on Monday June 24 with the entire fleet of boats, was postponed due to the high flow of the Seine, AFP learned this Friday June 21 from the prefecture from the Ile-de-France region.
A rehearsal was held successfully last Monday, but the one scheduled for June 24 is the third to be postponed due to heavy rain. The flow of the river this Friday was around five times higher than in the classic summer period, which would not make it possible to “draw the most relevant lessons”, judged the prefecture and the Paris-2024 organizing committee. .
The prefect says he is “confident”
Some 90 boats were to rehearse the July 26 parade at dawn on Monday, after the rehearsal of half the fleet on Monday which went well after being postponed twice due to the weather.
A month and a half before the Olympic events planned in the Seine, it displayed pollution levels well above regulatory standards.
“To date, the samples in the Seine do not correspond to the standards that we will have this summer”, commented during a press point the regional prefect Marc Guillaume, who said he was “confident, with the Cojo (Committee of “organization), on the holding of the tests at the end of July and beginning of August in the Seine”.
According to the graphs posted online, the level of concentration of fecal bacteria E.Coli was greater than 1,000 colony forming units (CFU)/100 ml, the threshold used by the international triathlon and swimming federations to authorize the holding of tests, almost every day from June 10 to 16.
Original article published on RMC Sport
