She pulled out of the race to conserve her energy for the 200m relay and recovered well enough two days later to take her place in the winning quartet, which set a new Olympic record.

She finished her meet on Sunday in the 800m but, as Katie Ledecky and Ariarne Titmus fought a spectacular duel at the front of the field, Pallister laboured to finish sixth in a time two-and-a-half seconds slower than the qualifying time she posted two months ago.

Her meet and the course of anti-virals are now at an end and she leaves Paris with a gold medal around her neck. But she is one of likely hundreds of athletes whose Games have been disrupted by COVID.

Within the Australian swim team, Zac Stubblety-Cook and Ella Ramsay, who pulled out of Saturday night’s 200 individual medley final, are also confirmed cases. Dolphins head coach Rohan Taylor confirmed the virus had swept through the Australian team.

“We did have COVID come through,” he said. “That was a challenge for us just to navigate and work through. I can’t thank the AOC enough for how they’ve supported us.

“It also created some nervous tension around the fact there is a mild illness there and we just have to be better prepared.”

The biggest name to so far catch the bug is British breaststroke champ Adam Peaty, whose campaign to win a historic third consecutive Olympic gold in the 100m fell 0.02 seconds short. The British team later revealed he swam the final with the virus in his system. Italian Nicolo Martinenghi’s winning time of 59.03 was more than two seconds slower that Peaty’s best.

For Peaty, a bout of COVID was hardly a tragedy. After a golden run in which he remained unbeaten over 100m for eight years, a broken foot and a series of personal crises culminated in him splitting with his partner and diving head-long into a spiral of booze and depression. The fact he is back competing in Paris is a triumph in itself.

For other athletes and teams, the virus has caused chaos. Australia’s women’s water polo team put more than a third of its Olympic squad into isolation a week before their first match after five players tested positive to COVID. Australian chef de mission Anna Meares said the Stingers cluster had been traced back to the athlete village.

Despite being at the centre of a confirmed COVID outbreak, the team has progressed through the preliminary rounds and remains in the hunt for Australia’s first gold medal in the sport since Sydney 2000.

Australia’s BMX gold medallist Saya Sakakibara is another athlete who caught COVID and kept on pedalling. She tested positive at the start of her competition week, but still managed to produce a winning ride at the Saint-Quentin-en Yvelines course. She leaves with much better memories than from Tokyo, where a heavy crash ended her Games in an ambulance.

The contrast with how Paris 2024 organisers are responding to COVID here and the blanket public health precautions adopted in Tokyo couldn’t be more stark.

In Tokyo, which was in a declared a state of emergency at the time of the 2021 opening ceremony, the Games were staged in a biosecure bubble, with athletes and accredited support staff unable to travel outside of Olympic accommodation venues or use the public transport system.

Athletes were subject to daily COVID tests and any positive cases were removed from the village and isolated in hospital before being sent home. No spectators were allowed at the venues and everyone was asked to wear a mask at all times unless eating, showering or competing.

The result was that, of 4303 athletes who competed in Tokyo, only 41 were confirmed as COVID cases while at the Games; a remarkably low infection rate of just 0.24 per cent.

Paris 2024 organisers have asked athletes and support staff to wear a mask if they are feeling sick and regularly wash their hands.

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Athletes who test positive to COVID while staying in the village are shifted into isolation rooms, offered meals in their rooms and provided with private transport to reduce the risk of outbreaks. There are no mandated restrictions on their movements or involvement in competition.

At the start of these Games, Australian chef de mission Anna Meares said the lesson from Tokyo was clear; that wearing masks, washing hands and taking other public health precautions stopped not just the spread of COVID, but other infectious diseases.

“So while it is not mandated here, we are actually encouraging our sports to take up the same protocols to ensure they get to that start line in the best possible way,” she said.

The lesson from Paris is that future Olympic organisers need to remember lesson one.

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