Paris Olympics: Seine pollution cancels training, left accused of disrupting trains

Organisers of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics have cancelled a triathlon swimming training session scheduled for the River Seine on Monday after recent heavy rains affected water quality levels in the river.

Sunday's training session was cancelled after tests on the Seine River on Saturday showed the water quality was not up to the required standard. There were no changes to the running and cycling sessions.

“Given the weather forecast over the next 36 hours, Paris 2024 and the World Triathlon Federation are confident that water quality will return to the required level before the start of the triathlon competition on 30 July,” the organisers said in a statement today.

France has spent about $1.4 billion on projects to improve the quality of the river's water so that it will be suitable for swimming during and after the Games, while the capital's authorities have announced the opening of three swimming sites to the public by June next year.

The men's swimming competition in the triathlon is scheduled to start near the Alexander III Bridge on Tuesday morning, with the women's race the following day. It will be the first competition to be held on the river since the 1900 Games.

Meanwhile, high-speed train traffic in France returned to normal on Monday, after three days of vandalism that caused chaos at stations before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, according to Transport Minister Patrice Vergriet.

"I can confirm that this morning (Monday), all trains are back in service," Vergriet told French radio RTL, while the perpetrator of the three attacks on strategic points of railway infrastructure on Friday remains unknown.

The French minister said that the attacks caused a total disruption to the movement of 800,000 people, including 100,000 whose trips had to be cancelled, adding that the cost to the French national railway company would be huge.

For his part, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that Paris tends to suspect that "far-left extremists are behind the sabotage that targeted the railway network operated by the national railway company last week."

Vandals targeted France's high-speed rail network before dawn on Friday, attacking signalling substations and cables at critical points, causing chaos for trains.

"We have identified several people," Darmanin told France 2 television, as part of the hunt for the vandals. He added that the vandals' style bore the hallmarks of far-left extremists, without providing examples.