The 2016 Summer Olympics start on August 5, and many are concerned that Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, won’t be ready.
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Rio Games organising committee spokesman Mario Andrada said water from the venue’s warm-up area would be pumped overnight into the murky main pool which had been used for water polo.
The whole operation should take about 10 hours, Nascimento said – 6 to drain, 4 to refill – but they should be able to pull it off before the synchronized swimming on Sunday.
“This is a way of cleaning swimming pools but you’re not supposed to combine it with chlorine”, Gustavo Nascimento, Rio 2016’s director of venue management, told reporters in Brazil.
Red-faced Rio Olympics organisers anxiously waited for the diving water to turn back from a nervy green to classic blue as a lack of chemicals was revealed as the cause of the colour changes.
While some athletes jokingly dubbed the diving pool “the swamp”, concerns were raised over the potential health risks and the site was eventually closed on Friday.
After days of leaving officials and spectators bewildered – and kind of grossed out – officials said Saturday a contractor had mistakenly dumped 160 liters of hydrogen peroxide into the water. It should be light blue, transparent. We could have done better in fixing it quickly. She concluded that they learned painful lessons the hard way.
Athletes have been complaining that the water or the chemicals have been hurting their eyes and that murkiness has made underwater visibility impossible. “The warm-up water is in ideal condition with ascetics, visibility and transparency for the athletes to perform at their best”. They could possibly move synchronized swimming to the 15,000-seat Olympic Aquatics Stadium, but that would require a major juggling of the schedule with water polo.
Hydrogen Peroxide. Officials organizing the Games said a contractor had erroneously put 80 litres of Hydrogen Peroxide into the pool which neutralised the chlorine.
Contrarily, NBC Olympics states some divers said the green pool water helped them during competition by giving them a contrast with the blue sky when spinning in the air. But when your bad day involves accidentally turning the world’s most famous swimming pool (right now) an unnerving shade of green, it’s not a fair comparison.
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Twenty water polo games have been played at Maria Lenk since the water began to change.
