PARIS — Just hours before the men's triathlon race was scheduled to begin, Olympic organizers, World Triathlon officials and City of Paris representatives jointly decided to postpone the race over concerns about the quality of water in the Seine River.
The race, scheduled to start at 8 a.m. Paris time, has been pushed to Wednesday at 10:45 a.m. The women's race, scheduled for 8 a.m. Wednesday, is still scheduled to run at that time.
The city of Paris has spent $1.5 billion to clean the Seine, long derided as filthy and inhospitable. After several weeks of increasingly promising samples, the triathlon appeared on schedule to run as normal. But heavy rains on Friday and Saturday which dampened the Opening Ceremony also affected the content of the river, and clearly the sampling returned just hours before the race was not to organizers' satisfaction.