Although the mayor of Paris tried in vain to demonstrate with a short splash that the Seine is not a canal, the Olympic champion is still willing to swim in the river with worrying water quality only with antibiotics.
The Dutch women's Olympic champion in open water swimming, Sharon van Rouwendaal, intends to take antibiotics before starting the 10-kilometer pentathlon in the Seine.
"A few days before the start, I take a small dose of antibiotics as a preventive measure to help prevent diarrhoea"
- quoted the words of the gold medalist at the 2016 Rio Games, and the second water marathoner in Tokyo in 2021, by the Dutch portal AD.nl.
The 30-year-old Van Rouwendaal, in addition to the Olympic podium places, won a total of ten individual world championship medals at different distances (5, 10 and 25 kilometers), including three gold, and he has 11 European championship medals, six of which are individual gold, three 5 , and three at 10 kilometers.
The Dutch Triathlon Association also recommends taking antibiotics for its competitors, whose swimming part of their sport is also planned by the hosts to be held in the Seine.
According to Marcel Wood, the coach of the national team of triathletes, water quality has always been a problem at the Olympics, but trouble has been avoided every time, so the expert hopes that the water in the river will be clean enough during the Paris competitions as well.
Previously, the mayor of Paris, and before that the French sports minister, took a dip in the Seine and swam in it for a short time, to prove that the river is suitable for organizing swimming competitions. At the same time, the tests measuring pollution mostly provided disturbing results, so it is a question of how clean the Sejna will be and how less harmful to health it will be during open water and triathlete competitions.
MTI
Featured image: Ripost
