'Athletes unhappy with risk of swimming in River Seine'published at 08:20 British Summer Time 30 July
Jamie Wilks from Loughborough University Sport Ecology department speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast about the poor water quality levels of the River Seine: "The level of E.coli has gone above the level of safe bathing for water that is set by World Aquatics and World Triathlon. It's gone about the thousand level of 100m of water. This is because of the intense rainfall that Paris suffered over the weekend during the opening ceremony, so this rainfall mixes with the waste water from houses in the street and the storm water run of into the sewer system then enters the River Seine."
On whether the water can be clear within 24 hours: "The water quality will change really quickly depending on the flow of the river and because it has been raining quite a lot over May and June, the flow of the river is quite high for the summer so you're looking within the next 24 hours that the water quality will improve. They've just got to hope there is no more rain within the next 24 hours."
On whether the athletes are happy with the risk: "The athletes are not happy about it. We spoke to Toby Robinson and Hector Pardoe who will be competing for Great Britain in the Marathon Swimming events and they're not happy but their attitude is that there are Olympic medals on the line and they are going to do whatever it takes to win."