PARIS — Casting aside concerns about the safety of swimming in the Seine River, Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands used a late pass to win the women’s 10-kilometer open water swimming at the Paris Olympics on Thursday.
After Moesha Johnson of Australia led most of the way, van Rouwendaal cut into the strong current of the Seine as the lead pack came around the final bridge support. Johnson stayed closer to shore, allowing the 30-year-old Dutch swimmer to claim the gold.
Van Rouwendaal reached up to slap the finishing pad in 2 hours, 3:34 seconds, while Johnson settled for silver in 2:03:39.7. The bronze went to Ginevra Taddeucci of Italy, the only other swimmer who had a shot at the end, in 2:03:42.8.
With a picturesque backdrop that no other city can provide — the Eiffel Tower looming over the course, the gold-domed Invalides a couple of blocks away, the statue-lined Pont Alexander III overlooking the starting buoy and finishing chute — van Rouwendaal added to her legacy as perhaps the greatest female open water swimmer in history.
She won gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and a silver in Tokyo three years ago.
Despite massive, expensive efforts to clean up an iconic river where swimming has been largely banned for more than a century, there were still doubts just 48 hours earlier that the event would go off as planned because of illness-causing bacteria lingering in the Seine.
Triathlon events had already been held in the river, though the schedule was upended by fluctuating bacteria levels in the water.
With that in mind, World Aquatics and Paris organizers had a back-up plan in place to shift the marathon swimming races — the men’s 10-k event is set for Friday — to the rowing and canoeing basin about 18 miles (30 kilometers) east of Paris.
No need.
After daily water readings prompted World Aquatics to cancel a test run Tuesday because conditions were deemed too risky, the situation had improved enough for a two-hour training session on Wednesday. That cleared the way for 24 female athletes to dive into murky water on a cool, sunny morning in Paris.
Despite the health risks, many swimmers were more concerned with a current that was estimated at 2-3 mph (3.2 to 4.8 kilometers per hour), a significant factor in a grueling sport that is often held in more docile waters such as lakes or ponds.
Indeed, the race settled into familiar pattern largely determined by the flow of the Seine. On the outward leg, with the strong current at their back, the swimmers spread out and went as fast as they could to the far end of bridge-lined course.
Things got more interesting at the turn, as the current caused them to swim almost sideways as they navigated around two buoys.
Then, everyone lined up along the edge of the river, sticking as close to the wall as possible, almost like a pack of stock cars drafting in a single-file line at a NASCAR race. They had to be careful not to get tangled up in vines that dangled into the waterway at some points, or run into boats that were tied up along the shore.
The idea was to negate the current as much as possible, though it was still a slog for the hearty group swimmers to get back to the feeding dock with the Seine slapping in their faces.
Johnson led after the first lap, ceded it to van Rouwendaal on lap two, the went back to the front at the midway point of the six-lap event.
Johnson, van Rouwendaal and Taddeucci gradually pulled away from the rest of the pack, leaving contenders such as defending Olympics champion Ana Marcela Cunha of Brazil in their wake.
Cunha finished fourth, more than 30 seconds behind the bronze medalist.
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
