‘I saw things I don’t want to think about’: Disgusted triathlete opens up on what it was REALLY like to swim in the Seine | HO

A repulsed triathlete has revealed how disgusting it is to swim in the River Seine – and slammed ‘bull****’ around organisers keeping Olympians safe.

Belgian star Jolien Vermeylen was part of the contingent wthat swam 1.5 kilometres in the Seine on Wednesday as Brit Beth Potter brought home a bronze medal.

The women’s triathlon had been postponed on Tuesday after tests revealed the Seine was not clean enough to swim in.

Around £1.2billion was spent clearing up a river that had seen a 100-year swimming ban – but as recently as June it had 10 times the permitted E.coli bacteria levels.

‘While under the bridge, I felt and saw things that we shouldn’t think about too much,’ Vermeylen told VTM.

Jolien Vermeylen claimed she ‘felt and saw things’ she didn’t want to think about in the Seine

The triathlete claimed it was ‘bull**** that athlete safety was a priority as athletes were made to swim in the river despite it previously being banned for 100 years

‘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***!’

A statement from Paris 2024 and World Triathlon had read: ‘Paris 2024 and World Triathlon reiterate that their priority is the health of the athletes.’

Vermeylen, who finished 24th, added: ‘I drank a lot of water, so we’ll know tomorrow if I’m sick or not. It doesn’t taste like Coca-Cola or Sprite, of course.

‘If the race hadn’t taken place, it would have been a disgrace for the organisation, for Paris, for France. 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. Just like I had the idea of ​​not falling but that failed too.’

There were fears that Olympic chiefs would have to cancel the swimming segment of the triathlon and convert it to a duathlon.

Triathlon training sessions in the Seine were cancelled on Sunday and Monday, leaving athletes in the dark about whether the swimming would go ahead.

Beth Potter secured bronze in the women’s triathlon after training sessions were canned

Around £1.2billion was spent on regenerating the river but multiple tests deemed it unclean

Alex Yee won one of two golds for Team GB on Wednesday with a last-gasp triathlon victory

A French water charity found ‘alarming’ levels of bacteria in all but one of 14 samples taken from the Seine in the six months before April