Kitty Chiller, the head of the Australian delegation, said in a statement team members “will not move into our allocated building” at the Athletes’ Village.
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“It’s looking like, according to our plan, that we will be able to move everybody in on Wednesday”, Chiller said, speaking Monday at Rio’s Olympic Park.
While Rio 2016 staff and contractors worked hard to solve some outstanding issues, numerous athletes posted photos on their social media accounts that expressed their happiness to be in the Olympic host city ahead of the opening ceremony on 5 August.
Australia’s protest came as the 31-building village, which will house 18,000 athletes and officials at the height of the games, opened officially Sunday.
She added that the Australian delegation continues to feel that the Olympic Village in Rio is the best such facility it’s been in. “They’ve got their building now, and I hope things go well from now on”.
Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes inspects construction work at the Olympic Park’s Tennis Centre in December.
Rio officials said they’d clean it up but, so far, that doesn’t seem to have happened.
Chiller initially responded that the team would prefer proper plumbing than the gesture, but said the next day they would love to take the mayor up on his offer, and will be presenting him with a gift when receiving the keys to their building.
Rio’s Olympic organizers said these kinds of problems have plagued all Olympic Games and promised to fix everything and even laughed off the matter. A spokesperson for the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) said that chef de mission Michael Vesper had “organized workmen together with Rio 2016”, and remained confident of final preparations.
Aside from security and the livability of the apartments, health concerns were also raised prior to the Olympics as some of the top athletes from the participating nation have declined to participate because of the Zika virus scare.
Argentina is sending a team of 213 athletes to Rio.
“The apartments are completed on the outside, but when we tested them, we found problems with plumbing and electricity”, he said.
The Olympic opening ceremony begins Friday, Aug. 5.
Numerous safety concerns have been raised ahead of the start of the Olympics, including the threat of worldwide terrorism and high crime levels in the host city.
New Zealand jiu jitsu athlete Jason Lee said on Facebook that he was “kidnapped” by armed men in military police uniforms and forced to withdraw cash from two separate ATMs.
“I was threatened with arrest if I did not get in their private auto and accompany them to two ATMs to withdraw a large sum of money for a bribe”, he said on Facebook.
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Rio 2016 President Carlos Nuzman claimed earlier this month that male golfers were withdrawing from next month’s Olympic Games because there is no prize money on offer and not due to concerns over the Zika virus.
