Olympic officials are to drain one of the swimming pools that turned green and refill it in a bid to revert it to its usual colour.
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Standing next to the clear pool in the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre the weird colour of the competition pool became apparent and earlier reports claimed it was due to a “proliferation of algae”.
The officials aren’t sure yet who made a decision to dump a boatload of hydrogen peroxide into their pools, but they have established that was catalyst for the pools’ sudden color change. It appears that a local pool maintenance worker believed he was doing the right thing when he added in the hydrogen peroxide. The individual responsible was not identified.
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.
Nascimento said the diving pool and then the bigger pool next to it turned green because of a chemical reaction which neutralised the chlorine.
German diver Stephan Feck shared a picture of himself and a teammate on Facebook standing in front of the diving well, which was temporarily closed Friday.
Additionally, the murky color has posed a problem for underwater vision, which posed a major problem for the upcoming synchronized swimming competition that is scheduled to begin Sunday. The swimmers must be able to hold their eyes open and see underwater to perform, and judges must be able to see them as well.
The process of draining 1 million gallons of water and replacing it is expected to take about 10 hours. Officials would not say what these compounds were.
“The water in the warm-up pool is in flawless condition”. Organizers hoped the problem would be cured in the next 12 hours.
“Of course it’s an embarrassment”, he said.
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“We are going to grab the water from the warm-up pool, drain the water out of the competition pool and insert the water from the warm-up pool into the competition pool”. “This was probably the only issue that we were unable to solve quickly”. He said it’s a painful lesson for them to learn.
