Germany’s Florian Wellbrock won the men’s 10km at the world championships in Singapore on Wednesday after the race had been postponed for several hours because of poor water quality.
Wellbrock, the gold medallist at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, won his third open water world title in a time of 1hr 59min 55.50sec at the Sentosa Island course after the race finally began at 1:00 pm (0500 GMT).
Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri took silver 3.70sec behind, followed by Australia’s Kyle Lee.
Governing body World Aquatics had postponed the race on Wednesday morning because water quality was “exceeding acceptable thresholds”.
The women’s 10km race had been postponed on Tuesday.
World Aquatics said early Wednesday morning that the new time slots for the races were “subject to acceptable test results”.
They later confirmed both races would proceed after further analysis of samples on Wednesday morning found “significant improvement”.
The women’s 10km race was due to start at 4:00 pm (0800 GMT) on Wednesday.
“Regular water quality monitoring and testing continues throughout the competition period to ensure athlete safety, with the health and safety of all participants continuing to guide all competition-related decisions,” World Aquatics said in a statement.
The governing body said levels of E. coli bacteria fell between the ranges of “good” and “excellent”, according to World Aquatics and World Health Organization regulations.
Water quality was a big problem for events held in the River Seine at last year’s Paris Olympics.
Of the 11 days of events and training scheduled in its murky waters, only five got the green light.
The river remained dogged by pollution problems despite a 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) upgrade to improve the Paris sewerage and water treatment system.
