The level of faecal bacteria in the Seine was above the World Aquatics standards of 400 colony-forming units of enterococci per 100 millilitres. The women’s marathon swim competition is set for Thursday, while the men are scheduled to race Friday.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/vCwp1
Just fucking swim indoors for fucks sake
Or find another river or lake nearby that isn’t treated like an open sewer.
That would make any potential world record not comparable with previous iterations of the event.
I’m more familiar with running marathon, where there are specific criteria that a course has to meet to be eligible for world record consideration. Along these, course must be generally on roads, and the finish line must be within a certain close distance of the start to mitigate wind effects.
They can easily replicate all conditions indoors