Alarm bells have also sounded over pollution in Guanabara Bay, site of the Olympic sailing events, and Copacabana Beach, where triathletes dived into the surf earlier this month for another pre-Games test event. Different groups within the competitors reported some sicknesses, in accordance with World Rowing, the game’s governing physique, however these have been about as anticipated at an occasion that featured greater than 500 younger rowers.
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US Rowing said it is investigating the cause of the athletes’ sickness, including looking not only at pollution as the culprit, but also looking at water bottles used in the boats or hygiene precautions that some athletes undertook that others didn’t. It has experienced illnesses during team travel on other trips to well-known destinations, including recently in Italy when six athletes out of 25 became ill.
Officials did not rule out that the Americans could have gotten ill from food or drinking water. “My private feeling is, I feel it is from the lake”, Ackerman stated.
With the countdown now to one year until the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Panasonic Brazil (PANABRAS) has announced that Panasonic Corporation and PANABRAS have signed an agreement to be the official technology partner for Rio de Janeiro’s Sugarloaf Mountain.
Francia said the U.S. team had taken precautions about competing in the polluted lake beneath Rio’s picturesque Christ the Redeemer statue, “but maybe we were not as strict in enforcing them as we should have been from the beginning”.
“As quickly as youngsters began taking place, we have been bleaching oar handles, we have been instantly washing arms after coming off the water”, she stated. Competitors from some countries were barred from having water bottles when out on the water.
US Rowing did not announce the source of the illnesses. But the common opinion is that the waters are the most likely culprit.
Rowing officials will debrief the athletes when they return to the U.S., likely through the rest of the week. They may speak to the athletes, assessment protocols for cleanliness.
The World Rowing Federation assured U.S. Rowing that it was testing water in the lagoon every two days in the weeks leading up to the competition and that those tests showed no significant numbers for E. Coli, he added.
“Clearly we have been all involved as a result of we all know the water’s polluted”, she added.
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Event organisers also cast doubt on the reports, saying they treated 14 people for diarrhea – eight Americans, and three each from Australia and Britain – and that all were medicated and fit enough to compete.
