Paris 2024 CEO doesn’t rule out making last-minute change to key Olympic event

EXCLUSIVE

Paris 2024 CEO Etienne Thobois hasn’t ruled out making a big change to the upcoming Olympic Triathlon due to pollution levels in the Seine river.

As it stands, the swimming element of the famous Olympic event will occur in the river, but multiple lead-up events have had to be cancelled as a result of poor water quality.

Mr Thobois told Shane McInnes on The Olympics Today that despite being “very confident” the Triathlon would proceed as planned, he wouldn’t rule out the swimming part of the event being cancelled if the famous river wasn’t clean enough to swim in.

Click PLAY to listen to the feature interview with Paris 2024 CEO Etienne Thobois

“We cross our fingers that it doesn’t happen and we have various contingency planning starting with the scheduling,” he told The Olympics Today podcast. 

“that’s part of the possibility, but definitely again, it’s not our central hypothesis, as you say, because we are very, very confident that we’ll be able to swim as the water is now really cleaning up. And frankly, the amount of effort that has been put into this, and now that we see the results, it’s very impressive.”

Thobois also weighed in on the current debate around ticket prices, saying around 90 per cent of all tickets for the Olympics had been sold.

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Image: Getty