The Olympics Get Queasy.

Yeah, YOU jump in the Seine

Thanks for being here. We hope you’ll stay.

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Yuck. Do not grab a mouthful of this.

Late Sunday night, the Belgian Olympic Committee announced that its team wouldn’t be competing in Monday’s mixed relay triathlon at the Paris Games. Reason: One of their competitors who’d already swum in the Seine River got sick.

Wait, let me back up two steps.

1.) The mixed relay triathlon is cool. It’s two men and two women, but instead of people having a single responsibility, they all have to do everything: swim, bike, run. Each team member covers a certain portion of the distance in each event, then taps hands with a teammate to hand off to the next leg. It can get frantic at the end because teams can stay so close to each other time-wise.

2.) The Seine is just chock-full of E-coli.

So that last part is not a surprise. Practically from the moment Paris was selected to host these Olympics, folks have been pointing out that one of the world’s most famous rivers is a cesspool. (I apologize if this conflicts with your image of a Parisian vacation stroll along the Seine.)

With very few exceptions, in fact, the Seine has been off-limits to swimmers for, let’s see here, carry the one…about a hundred years. The first bans on swimming came in 1923. Only something like the Olympics would cause officials to suddenly declare, We can fix this! The events will go on!

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But that’s not how this works. The Seine is polluted and long has been, and the French government for decades basically declared the problem to be unsolvable (or didn’t try real hard). Wastewater and waste products from the city’s antiquated sewer system flow into that river on a regular basis. Rain makes the wastewater count worse, while sunlight tends to kill some of the bacteria that festers.

Sunlight good, rain bad. Paris has been getting rain, as you might’ve noticed.

Again, though, everybody in the world who cared could see this coming, and did. Warnings about the toxic bacteria levels have been sounded forever. Individual countries with Olympic competitors kept asking the same question over the past several years: Will it be safe? And the answer continually came back: Oh, sure. I mean, probably. We’ll see. We’re definitely improving our sewage, put it that way. Come to Paris!

It’s reported that the French spent $1.53 billion to upgrade the Parisian sewer system. They think the Seine will become safe to swim. Next summer.

Missed it by that much.

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Imagine this as your Olympic experience: Your event gets postponed because the water is (literally) full of crap, you can’t do a practice run, and then one day they tell you to go ahead, jump in there and win a medal.

That happened to those in the men’s triathlon at these Games. On the women’s side, Belgium’s Claire Michel fell ill after competing in the triathlon last Wednesday, a day when officials only declared the Seine safe to swim at the last minute — 4 a.m. on the morning of the race, to be specific.

After Michel’s experience, the Belgians said no thanks. The mixed relay on Monday went on without them. Germany won. The U.S. team had a near photo finish with Great Britain (I told you, this event is cool), and in the end the Americans were awarded the silver medal. Afterward, one of the Netherlands athletes noted that the Seine “was a bit browner” for the race than it had been for the men’s triathlon.

Simply gross. On the other hand, said U.S. relay member Seth Rider, “I don’t really care now if I get sick. One night in the bathroom for an Olympic silver medal, I’ll take it.”

You know what? This may not work out to be the slogan Paris was hoping for.