Does a video show an Olympic Games athlete vomit as a direct result of swimming in Paris' Seine? No, that's not true: The athlete shown throwing up after his triathlon faulted the Parisian heat rather than the Seine. Although the river's water quality was poor in the days preceding the triathlon, there is no evidence that it caused Olympic athletes to get sick en masse.
The claim was implied in a post (archived here) on X on July 31, 2024. The post included a video showing athletes diving into a river, then another athlete vomiting, suggesting that the sickness was caused by the river. The caption of the post read:
🇫🇷🚨‼️ LMAO: Let them swim in the Seine in Paris, what could go wrong?
Another Olympic masterpiece
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Aug 1 14:18:23 2024 UTC)
The video is a compilation of two different events. The first clip shows an athlete whose swimsuit featured the letters "SEREGNI" and "ITA," suggesting that the first word was a part of the swimmer's name and the second word was their team, Italy. Lead Stories searched for "Seregni Italy Olympics" using Google and found information for a triathlon athlete named Bianca Seregni (archived here) who competed for Italy's Olympic team in the women's triathlon competition (archived here). The clip, then, shows Seregni and the other women's triathlon athletes diving into the Seine (archived here).
The second clip featured an athlete throwing up and is clearly a clip from a men's competition. In the video, there is signage on the ground indicating that it was taken at the 2024 Olympic Games. Lead Stories searched for "male athlete vomiting Olympics 2024" using Google and found the image stills of the footage, which showed men's triathlon athlete Tyler Mislawchuk throwing up during the running portion of the three-stage competition (archived here). Mislawchuk, who was competing for Canada's Olympic team, attributed his vomiting to the heat in Paris, not the condition of the Seine (archived here). It also is not unusual for endurance athletes to vomit during or following a competition (archived here).
The Seine is a controversial location for swimming (archived here). The men's triathlon was postponed (archived here) because of the river's poor water quality. Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim on X. We found an article (archived here) from Time Magazine published on July 31, 2024, that highlighted how triathlon athletes felt after swimming in the Seine. Although the article noted that "Symptoms...like diarrhea, stomach cramping, and vomiting--may creep in over the next few hours and days," none of the athletes highlighted in the article mentioned having those issues.
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to the Olympic Games can be found here.
