As rain still drizzled in the Paris morning after three days of cancellations between training sessions and the actual events, the women triathlon athletes dove right in as scheduled at 8:00 local time, while the men’s race was set to start at 10:45.

Athletes and fans finally took a deep breath when World Triathlon and the Paris Games' organising committee gave the go-ahead, a day after the men's event had been postponed because of pollution in the Seine river.

"The parties involved have confirmed that the women's triathlon and the men's triathlon will take place as planned. The results of the latest water analyses have been deemed to be in order," said a statement made public in the early Wednesday hours.

It had been quite an ordeal for organisers, despite expressing optimism on Tuesday that the competition would take place as planned.

“There are unfortunate meteorological events outside of our control. But otherwise, the project is still very strong. When we see the impact on the quality and the legacy that we can leave also to the Parisians, we all feel extremely proud of what we’ve done so far,” Aurélie Maerle, Paris 2024 director of sports, had said Tuesday after the cancellation of the men’s event. “We still have a contingency day and we are confident that we can organise these competitions tomorrow. We based our decision on the data and we are confident that the triathlon event could take place fully. Unfortunately, we are in XXI Century, where we can go from heavy rain to extreme heat in a few days, like we just saw, so I’s hard to control the water quality of a river. We are sympathetic with the athletes and their families and have put contingency plans in place.”

The president of World Triathlon, Spaniard Marisol Casado, also forecasted that the competition would be able to take place on Wednesday after days of sunshine hit the Paris streets and despite rain forecasts.

“We are disappointed but all in a good mood because we think that we are going to have an opportunity and we can find a different moment next week if we need to. But we are confident that it will happen tomorrow (Wednesday) and quite happy,” she said, also pointing out that offering up a biathlon was still an option. “We can’t cancel the event, because then there are no medals. Our athletes really want to compete. It’s not unfair. It’s part of the sport, just another situation of the competition. We already had a biathlon in the latest European Championships in Madrid.”

Rising temperatures were still an issue, however, and organisers took precautions against the heat by adding water stations for athletes.