The water polo pool, which had been aqua blue the day before, turned a greenish hue ahead of Australia’s match on Thursday.
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On Tuesday, the blue waters of the diving pool at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre mysteriously turned a swamp green overnight. British diver Tom Daley took to Twitter to show his confusion and disbelief. There was no sign of any water quality issues with the water polo pool during the first day of the women’s competition Tuesday.
Rio 2016 spokesperson Mario Andrada said: “We did have test events with the same number of divers but we are using the pool for a longer period now”.
“This was because of heat and a lack of wind”, he said. The pool will be blue tomorrow (Wednesday).
“If it were green and yellow, we would know it was a patriotic thing”, Andrada joked, in reference to host nation Brazil’s national colors.
“Everybody was scratching their heads going, ‘What’s going on?'” he said. “But I’m not sure what that means”. It’s not really unsafe.
Pools used for diving are typically warmer than those used for swimming and warmer water is more conducive to algae growth. But a couple players said they could tell the chemical mixture is off. “The visuals are really, really important in diving”.
“We brought in a team of independent experts to check”.
“I haven’t seen anything like it before”, Espinosa said.
There had been speculations that algae may have been the cause, but officials have blamed a “chemical imbalance” in the water which is now affecting the adjacent pool.
Bronze medalist Meaghan Benfeito of Canada told reporters that the color had made her and her partner Roseline Filion want to laugh, but the green actually helped. “We had more dirt in the water and that generated more algae”.
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“There was a sudden decrease of alkalinity”, Andrada said.
