“All 11 medal events will now take place on 1 September, instead of across two days, on 1 and 2 September,” Paris 2024 organisers said in a statement on Thursday.

When Paris was awarded the 2024 Games, officials made it a point of emphasis to highlight the French Capital’s iconic sites and transform some of its less appealing aspects. Making the Seine a swimmable (or bathable, as the preferred phrasing goes) river was one of the priorities as City Hall hopes both Games leave a lasting legacy, an imprint far beyond the winners and losers and the rankings atop the medal table.

“We want Parisians to enjoy their river again like in the past and be able to bathe and swim in a natural milieu, at least in defined and controlled areas where currents do not pose a threat,” deputy mayor Antoine Guillou expressed during the Olympics. “With the effect of climate change, summers are getting much hotter and we have suffered severe canicules recently. People are going to need to find refuges of freshness that provide relief. And hopefully, the Seine can become that.”

But despite a deep financial effort to improve the water quality that nearly cost €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) of the public budget, the constant testing became a cause of headache for organisers during the Olympics and seems to have endured as a logistical nightmare as well during the Paralympics: the latest Thursday weather forecast, with showers expected, prompted another two-day postponement to the swimming leg of the Paralympic triathlon, now set to take place on Sunday (weather permitting).

Due to an exceptionally wet spring and early summer, the Seine had consistently failed water quality tests until early July as levels of E. coli bacteria, an indicator of faecal matter, were more than 10 times the permitted limit. Its traces remain the main issue, as they were three weeks ago when the Olympics took place. Although many athletes then told Inside The Games that they had swum in way worse waters than the ones they competed in in Paris, some of them did experience some level of discomfort after the races, even feeling sick, though no major issues arose followingly.

“The decision to hold all medal events on one day was taken in view of the weather forecast and to provide athletes and coaches with as much certainty as possible. The course of the swim remains unchanged,” the Paris 2024 Thursday statement read.

It’s the French capital’s desire to render the iconic Seine a scene of sorts for popular gatherings and some form of competition, as was the case in the 1900 Paris Olympics. But despite massive financing, public effort and quite the public relations campaign by Paris officials, it has been all but smooth sailing for the grandiose initiative, as sewer problems have been a constant and scepticism rampant among residents and international media, with event cancellations aplenty.

Despite some local pushback and a few complaints from the athletes themselves, all triathlon events were finally held with the swimming leg in the Seine during the Olympics regardless; and Paralympics organisers have now set aside two contingency days on 2 and 2 September, in case the bad weather persists.

“Paris 2024 and World Triathlon will continue their daily monitoring of water quality and the flow of the current. A familiarisation swim (athlete training) successfully took place on the morning of 29 August,” organisers explained. “Decisions to go ahead with familiarisation swims on 30 and 31 August, as well as the competitions on 1 September, will be taken ahead of each event.”