The Olympic diving pool in Rio turned green Tuesday turning greener throughout the day. A Canada water expert was offering assistance to the Olympic crew, while athletes were still unsure on Wednesday morning how the quality of the pool would be later in the day.
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Pictures from the venue on Wednesday show the diving pool is still tinged with green, while the adjacent pool used for the synchronised swimming and water polo appears to be going the same way. The water polo pool has been effected the same way, ‘ Rio 2016’s Mario Andrada said during a news conference.
Andrada said they expect the pool to return to its normal blue color sometime Wednesday.
“Once you get behind, it gets hard to get back in front of it”, said Jerry Wallace, chairman of the California Pool & Spa Association, a trade group.
FINA claims water tanks “ran out some of the chemicals used in the water treatment process”.
“So when it’s green, it does make it slightly easier. We kept the same level of maintenance as we did before, but we had far more athletes”, he said.
Water treatment experts insisted that there were many possible causes, including algae, a lack of disinfectant or the way in which the water interacted with copper in the heating system.
The kale-colored water wasn’t just a cosmetic nuisance; it was so dark that divers couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. Wallace said some strains of algae will grow even in water that is balanced. At first, Rio officials said they were not sure of the reason. “Algae spores can be transmitted”.
The warm and humid climate in Rio de Janeiro could be a factor, too. For the water polo pool, that is. But a couple players said they could tell the chemical mixture is off. “The last quarter, I can barely open my eyes”.
American diver David Boudia, who won silver while diving into blue water on Monday, and Great Britain’s Tom Daley, who took bronze, were as shocked as anyone. “If it were green and yellow, we would know it was a patriotic thing”.
Ontario company Sustainable Aquatic Systems helped install numerous Olympic pools in Rio de Janeiro.
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“Yes, it feels like that, but I don’t know”, Zalanki said between sniffles. “In Hungary there’s lots of water like this”. FINA says that the FINA Sports Medicine Committee conducted tests on the water quality and concluded that “there was no risk to the health and safety of the athletes”, and as such chose to proceed with Tuesday’s diving events anyway.
