In-Seine? Out

By BRUCE LOWITT

Following a series of what Paris Olympic organizers called “completely predictable unfortunate events including diseases, disappearances and altered physiques,” the remaining marathon swimming events in the River Seine were canceled Monday.

“We believe that after testing the athletes and discovering some, ahem, ‘unexplained problems’, we have decided that subjecting competitors to whatever’s going on in the Seine could lead to some problems, like the massive loss of life, creation of monsters, brain-eating zombies, and worldwide panic,” Paris Deputy Mayor Pierre Rabadan said.

The first incident involved Belgium’s Claire Michel, who finished 38^th in Wednesday’s women’s triathlon, became ill shortly thereafter and was being tested for E. Coli, intestinal enterococci and aspergillosis, a respiratory infection that plagued non-avian dinosaurs.

“We don’t think this is a ‘Jurassic Park’ situation,” Rabadan said, “but you can never be too cautious. We don’t need a regenerated twenty-five-ton, one-hundred-and-fifty-million-year-old Brontosaurus stomping around the Eiffel Tower, especially a pissed-off one with a thirty-foot-long sore throat.”

Later Monday, Turkish marathon swimmer Kuzey Tuncelli told reporters via a translator that “I was swimming next to (teammate) Emir Batur Albayrak when he shouted, ‘I think something just bit my …’ and then he went under. I tried to grab him but he got yanked away and never surfaced.”

Turkish coach Türker Oktay said Albayrak “is known as something of a – how you say? – jokester so I wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up drunk or with some – how you say? – babe on his arm in a few days. But, yes, I’m starting to wonder.”

Matan Roditi, whose fourth-place finish in the 2020 Summer Games marathon in Tokyo Bay was the closest Israel has come to an Olympic swimming medal, underwent surgery to remove a third leg which he said “grew out of my tuches” after he spent several hours practicing in the Seine last week. “I definitely think there’s something in the water that shouldn’t be there,” he said.

The 25-year-old Roditi said he wanted to keep the extra leg – “It would have made me a lot faster” – but Husain Al-Mussallam, president of World Aquatics, the sport’s governing body, said it would give Roditi an unfair advantage.

“No big deal,” Roditi said of the surgery. “Sort of like a second bris.”