Con­trary to a re­cent ac­tion/hor­ror movie, there are no sharks in the Seine. There was a shark watch, though, at the very first Olympic triathlon in 2000 dur­ing the Syd­ney Games.

At the Olympics, wa­ter dilem­mas are noth­ing for triathlon swim­ming.

A boat once got in the way of an Olympic triathlon, too. And now, two of the last three Sum­mer Games triathlons have dealt wa­ter qual­i­ty con­cerns swirling around the swim por­tion.

There al­ways seems to be some­thing with a sport that com­bines swim­ming, cy­cling and run­ning. The tri­als and tribu­la­tions of stag­ing the men’s and women’s triathlon com­pe­ti­tions in Paris’ famed wa­ter­way are just the lat­est chap­ter.

Or­ga­niz­ers have been adamant in their in­sis­tence the swim­ming por­tion of the triathlon and the marathon swim­ming events next week could safe­ly be held in the riv­er. There have been health ques­tions lead­ing in­to the event, sim­i­lar to Rio in 2016 at the Co­paca­bana beach.

“I un­der­stand they’re great wa­ter­ways and they’re sources of pride and all that, but I don’t think it’s worth it just to do this,” Dr. Nicole Iovine, an in­fec­tious dis­eases spe­cial­ist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da, said. “Why put any­body at any lev­el of risk? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s some­thing that can­not be com­plete­ly con­trolled from a health and safe­ty per­spec­tive. And since there are al­ter­na­tives, why take the risk?”

Paris Olympics: Seine Wa­ter Qual­i­ty

The scenery around the Seine was cer­tain­ly pic­turesque, es­pe­cial­ly with the Eif­fel Tow­er in the back­drop as the triath­letes fin­ished on the bridge that spans the wa­ter­way.

How­ev­er, the com­pe­ti­tion was plagued by con­cern over the wa­ter qual­i­ty. El­e­vat­ed lev­els of bac­te­ria de­layed the men’s race. But the com­pe­ti­tion was held and the views played well on tele­vi­sion as ath­letes cy­cled and ran by Paris’ finest at­trac­tions.

“We’re lucky enough to have prob­a­bly the most beau­ti­ful venue of any race in the Olympics,” gold medal­ist Alex Yee of Britain said.

It was all part of an am­bi­tious plan to clean up the long-pol­lut­ed Seine, spend­ing 1.4 bil­lion eu­ros ($1.5 bil­lion) in in­fra­struc­ture im­prove­ments. A few swim prac­tice ses­sions need­ed to be scratched and the men’s race pushed back a day due to wa­ter qual­i­ty and held af­ter the women’s race.

“I didn’t think the Seine was that dirty (Wednes­day),” said French triath­lete Léo Berg­ere, who won the bronze medal. “Big cities al­ways have to deal with the pol­lu­tion. To­day they man­aged to de­liv­er.”

PARIS (AP) —