Magheralin’s Daniel Wiffen on course for marathon River Seine swim as training session gets green light
Daniel Wiffen’s shot at a dream finish to his Paris Games experience remains on course after the athlete training session for the Olympic marathon swimming in the River Seine went ahead on Wednesday morning.
Magheralin’s Wiffen, who has won bronze and gold for Team Ireland in the pool this summer, is included on the start list to enter his first-ever 10km open water swim this Friday.
“Yeah, I can't wait to get to the 10km honestly,” said Wiffen, as reported by BBC Sport NI earlier this week. “It's going to be a great race, I'm sure, so I’m looking forward to it.”
World Aquatics cancelled a Tuesday familiarisation session ahead of the women’s race on Thursday and men’s event as water quality assessments found that levels of Enterococci – an indicator of faecal pollution – were too high in the river.
But a Paris 2024 statement said: “During a meeting on water quality held on 7 August at 4am attended by representatives from World Aquatics, including their technical delegates and medical delegates, Paris 2024, Meteo France, DRIEAT, the City of Paris and the Prefecture of the Île-de-France Region involved in carrying out water quality tests, World Aquatics have confirmed that the familiarisation session for the marathon swimming (athlete training) will go ahead as planned on 7 August from 7.30-9.30AM.
“The results of the latest water quality tests, reviewed during the meeting at 4am, have been assessed as compliant by World Aquatics, allowing for the familiarisation session for the marathon swimming to take place.”
The issue of water quality had dominated the build-up to all three triathlons in the first week of the Games.
Several familiarisation sessions were cancelled and the men’s race delayed by one day to allow conditions to improve.
Monday’s mixed relay went ahead without the Belgian team, who withdrew after athlete Claire Michel fell ill having competed in the women’s race, finishing 38th, the previous Wednesday.
In the build-up to the Olympics, Paris invested 1.4billion euros trying to clean up the Seine, but water quality levels have dipped during the Games after a number of storms.