Olympic fever/bacteria!

The River Seine walkway with Parisians relaxing, Paris, France. Getty Images. James O’Neil.

I’m headed to Paris tomorrow evening for a week! (Yes, I do get Olympic fever, which unlike other causes of fever, is not generally hazardous.) The plan is to take in some Olympic competition and interview a few doctors who work for Team USA. If you’ve ever wanted to ask these team physicians what their gigs are like, I’m open to your suggested questions! Please add them in the Comments section.

I’ve got tickets for a handful of events—but one thing I’m also hoping to see is an open water swimming competition, which is slated to be held in the Seine River that runs through Paris. After initially being postponed due to fears of an epidemiological event of Olympic proportions, the river has once again been declared safe for the competitors, starting today.

There’s something of a colorful history around this. The Seine is generally, and somewhat infamously, not considered safe for swimming. That’s because there are high levels of any number of bacteria that, when swallowed in gulps, can cause substantial gastrointestinal illness. A $1.5 billion investment in cleaning the water adequately to permit hazard-free competition was quite a gamble. It looks like it might pay off.

For a while there, things were looking, well, murky. Pathogen levels seem to depend on fickle conditions (think rain, and less the bad behavior of Parisians). However, organizers had long been optimistic, projecting confidence. Recently, the mayor of Paris took a very public swim in the river, solely to prove that the Olympic plan to hold events in those waters was really safe. To her credit, she did not die. (If there is a shortage of the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin in Paris, though, I could posit a guess as to why.)

In the last week, the Olympic organizers have had to frequently test the river for various pathogens, like E. coli. Indeed, things have been touch-and-go (pun intended). Recent rains brought bacteria levels back to levels deemed unsafe, causing the triathlon to be postponed for a couple of days in a row. But things are looking good, as of last night!

For their part, I’m sure the athletes would have taken the risk either way. One plan had been to convert the triathlon into a biathlon, if the waters were deemed unfit for too many more days. I’m sure most of the athletes would have been pretty upset about that—perhaps more than willing to take the GI-related risks than miss the chance to compete properly after years of training. Indeed, just about all of the bacteria that swimmers might ingest from the Seine would probably not cause any illness until around 12-24 hours after the exposure. So, in all likelihood, the athletes could have raced for Gold today, and, umm, for porcelain tomorrow.

In any case, I hope to watch a race in person on Friday. And if there is a massive outbreak of a GI illness in the Olympic village, I suppose they will need a lot more doctors to help. Hey, I’m available.

I’ll speak to you all from Paris!