Triathletes swam in waters off Copacabana Beach Friday ahead of weekend Olympic test events, despite published warnings that water in the area was “unfit” for swimming.
But a day after revelations about dire water quality in Rio de Janeiro the Olympic triathlon champion, Alistair Brownlee, played down the concerns, saying: “I’ve swum in a lot worse than that.”
The British Gold Medalist, who will take part in a test event in Copacabana this weekend, said triathletes were resigned to a degree of risk.
Bermuda’s Flora Duffy is expected to compete as well.
The website of the Rio de Janeiro environmental agency said the water, which has been declared unfit ten previous times this year, was unsafe based on the results of a Monday water test.
Officials publicly insisted athletes were safe and stuck to the competition schedule. Later in the day, Rodrigo Garcia, the sports director for the local Olympic organizing committee, said that new, unpublished water test results show that the area is suitable for the competition, but provided no details on the results. The Rio environmental agency didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The situation prompted new concern about Rio’s polluted waters. On Thursday, The Associated Press released the results of a five-month investigation that showed that Olympic venues are rife with disease-causing viruses and bacteria.
The AP study showed that the spot where athletes were entering the water on Copacabana Beach had a minimal reading of over 2 million human adenovirus per liter — that’s 2,000 times the reading that water experts in the U.S. say would be considered highly alarming if seen on beaches in the U.S. or Europe. At the high end, Copacabana registered 49 million adenoviruses per liter in the AP study.
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