SPORTS TALK: Olympics are never without controversy
By Greg Buchanan
The Olympics are never short on controversy and scandal, and Paris was no different. From opening ceremony shenanigans to polluted water, drone-spying and hijab bans, here are the stories stealing the headlines at the 2024 Paris Olympics for all the wrong reasons.
We saw the organizers' worst fears come to light as City of Paris representatives and World Triathlon officials were forced to postpone the men's triathlon event because the water quality in the Seine River is still awful.
Paris' Seine River is still unfit for competition despite the $1.5 billion spent ahead of these Olympics to clean and treat the water for the triathlon and marathon swimming. Heavy downpours over the weeks and days ahead of the 2024 Games have caused bacteria levels to spike once again. The swim portion of Monday's Olympic triathlon training session was cancelled for the second consecutive day because of the ongoing water-quality issues in the river.
Paris 2024 and the World Triathlon reiterate that their priority is the health of the athletes. The tests carried out in the Seine revealed water quality levels that did not provide sufficient guarantees for the event to be held.
If it goes ahead as planned, the swimming portion of the triathlon will mark the first time athletes have competed in the channel since the 1900 Paris Games—yes, 1900.
The biggest sports-related controversy in Paris went down before the 2024 Games even began, with the Canadian women's soccer team at the centre of a drone-spying scandal that stole the headlines early on.
A Canadian analyst was caught flying a drone over a closed New Zealand training session ahead of their Olympic opening match. The staffer in question was detained and eventually sent home from the Olympics after police raided the staffer's hotel room and recovered the footage.
FIFA investigations followed and eventually resulted in heavy punishments for the Canadian side, including a massive fine for Canada Soccer, one-year bans for three of Canada's coaches, including head coach Bev Priestman, and a six-point deduction to be implemented during the group stage of this Olympic women's soccer competition.
The Canadian Olympic Committee and Canada Soccer—the nation's governing body for the sport—officially appealed FIFA's six-point penalty.
At the end of the day, the controversy behind the Games in Paris still captured our attention, and many of us spent hours watching many sports that we would never get a chance to watch outside of the Olympic games.