© The Washington Post
HIGHLIGHTS
- 1The water in the diving pool turned green a couple of days ago
- 2Athletes have complained of ‘itchy eyes’
- 3Colour change has been blamed on ‘low levels of alkanity’ in the pool
Officials in Rio closed the Olympic diving pool on Friday morning, three days after the water at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Center turned green.
It’s not just the color.
“The Olympic diving pool has been closed again because of water quality issues…a German diver says “the whole building smells like a fart,” tweeted an Australian journalist.
Olympic officials have maintained all week that the green water was safe in both the diving pool and the water polo pool, which also has turned green. They blamed the color change on “a sudden decrease in the alkalinity” of the water and pledged that they were treating the pools with chlorine, which caused another set of problems: Water polo players started to complain about burning eyes.
That problem has lingered into Friday and moved to the diving pool.
Rio 2016 confirm diving pool closed this morning while they continue to sort out the water. One or two athletes had “itchy eyes,” according to Owen Gibson of the Guardian.
But the divers have seemingly not had any issues, at least publicly.
“We knew it was safe,” said Sam Dorman, part of the silver medal-winning U.S. synchronized diving team. “There were no issues, nothing to worry about. We really weren’t focused on that and just focused more on giving it one dive at a time, plain and simple.”
Only one diving event was scheduled for Friday: the women’s three-meter springboard preliminaries, which were scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. EDT. No word yet on whether it will need to be postponed because of the water issues. Friday’s water polo matches have started as scheduled, and the water appears to be the appropriate shade of blue.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed).
