German athlete reveals she ‘vomited NINE times and had diarrhoea’ after swimming in River Seine for Olympic race – despite £1.2BILLION clean-up job

A German Olympic athlete claims she vomited nine times and suffered from diarrhea after swimming in the River Seine, raising new questions about the river’s suitability for sports.

Leonie Beck finished ninth in the women’s marathon swimming event on Thursday, in which athletes brave the water for 10 kilometers and more than two hours.

Around £1.2 billion was spent cleaning up a river that had been off-limits to swimming for 100 years in preparation for the Games, but in June this year, ten times the permitted level of E.coli was found.

The triathlons were postponed earlier in the Olympics due to concerns about water quality, but went ahead anyway. The women’s 10km also met safety standards after testing.

However, Beck has spoken openly about the horrific health problems she faced just a day after the event.

German athlete Leonie Beck claimed she ‘vomited nine times’ and had ‘diarrhea’ after swimming in the River Seine

Beck competed in the women’s marathon swimming competition on Thursday and felt unwell on Friday

She posted an Instagram story in which she gave a thumbs up with the captions “vomited nine times + diarrhea” and “the water quality in the Seine is approved” with a green check mark.

Belgian 1.5km runner Jolien Vermeylen claimed earlier in August that she felt and saw ‘things that we shouldn’t think too much about’ during her swim.

“The Seine has been dirty for a hundred years, so they can’t say that the safety of the athletes is a priority. That’s nonsense,” she told VTM.

There were fears that the Olympic presidents would have to cancel the swimming portion of the triathlon and convert it into a duathlon.

Triathlon training in the Seine was cancelled at the end of July, leaving athletes unsure whether the swim would go ahead.

Swimming in the Seine, which runs through Paris, has been prohibited since 1923. In 1990, Jacques Chirac, then mayor of the city, declared that he would make the river clean enough to enter, but he failed to do so.

Meanwhile, the director general of Paris 2024 refused to apologise to the participants when asked by Mail Sport whether he would do so.

“We have to wait,” said Etienne Thobois. “We don’t do fictional scenarios. We have a lot of respect for the athletes.

Around £1.2 billion was spent restoring the river, but multiple tests showed it was unclean

A French water charity found ‘alarming’ levels of bacteria in all but one of 14 samples taken from the Seine in the six months to April

“They are the heart of the Games. We have done everything we can in relation to the international federations and government bodies to achieve the goal of swimming in the Seine, which will be a fantastic legacy.”

Parisians had threatened to defecate in the river in the run-up to the Olympics, in protest at the seemingly ineffective spending to clean up the river.