Jon Gast: Door County triathlon avoided the issues that face the Olympics in Paris

If competing in a triathlon isn’t tough enough, how about contesting one leg of it in dirty water?

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case at the recent Door County Triathlon where conditions off Murphy Park in Egg Harbor were ideal for the open-water portion of the competition.

The same can’t be said for the Paris Olympics, where a debate has swirled around the Seine River, the iconic and romantic waterway through the center of the city. But, outside of the fact that the river joins with the Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral to keep the city’s post card industry alive, there sits within the river something that few tourists may have been aware of.

The Olympics gets underway this week but as recently as this month, the Olympics opening ceremony on the river remained in question thanks to ongoing sewage pollution in the River Seine. That changed last week when the city’s mayor took a plunge and a number of Parisians followed.

The Seine is due to host competitions including the 10km freestyle swim and the triathlon. Euronews.com reported that following the Games, there are plans to keep the Seine swimmable for the general public, overturning a 100-year ban. Of course, that’s only if the multibillion-dollar project to clean up the river is successful.

A rehearsal for the opening ceremonies on the river earlier this month was canceled due to dangerous concentrations of fecal bacteria in the water. If that isn’t enough to make an athlete want to turn in the key to their Olympic Village room I’m not sure what would.

The triathlon is challenging enough without environmental issues. The combination of endurance swimming, biking and running presents a complex competition that leaves most people wondering who and why such an event was ever conceived.

My daughter competed in the Door County event a while back and hasn’t done it since. Having completed the Boston Marathon three times and being an avid biker, she was a victim of the water. Open-water swimming isn’t anything like doing laps at the YMCA pool. It’s actually kind of scary with all those people thrashing around you and no place to go if you get a cramp.

Consequently, I’ve never competed in a triathlon nor would I want to, but it hasn’t kept me from volunteering a few times on the course for traffic control, something that presented its own set of challenges.

I remembered at the time that I was especially impressed with these athletes. Many thanked me for volunteering my time while they were peddling past me. I appreciated the gesture but it was nothing like paying an entry fee to endure what they were going through.

“Nice job, keep up the good work,” I’d yell out every so often. I left off the part about having 36 more miles to peddle.

Yes, 36 miles! They had already gone 20 after a 1.2-mile swim. Hundreds of them flew by me on this uncompromising loop that would ultimately bring them back past me some 15 miles later – many with the same smile and warmth that you might get from the Wal-Mart greeter.

But there also had to be a crevice somewhere in their brain reminding them that a 13-mile run followed. I’m not sure what drives people to attempt such a thing.

These were competitors in the Triathlon’s first Half Iron, a slimmed down version of the famed Ironman Triathlon made famous in Hawaii. Half the distance, half the torture. It wasn’t just muscular tanned men you’d expect competing. I remember there seemed to be quite a few women and a surprising number of older people. Some of you might even call them elderly. I didn’t consider myself elderly back then but I certainly am now and have since surrendered my bike to my granddaughter.

But now this Olympic version comes with a triathlon unlike any other Olympics that has preceded it. If that isn’t bad enough, Olympic officials have had to weigh whether to expose swimmers to an even longer event. The Olympic swim marathon will have swimmers exposed to the Seine for at least two hours.

Mayor Hidalgo’s swim was originally scheduled for June, but heavy rains all spring and summer sent the river’s E. coli rates soaring, pushing her swim back and threatening to move the athletic events.

But Paris seems to have dodged one of its most significant hurdles provided the rain holds off.