After several reports from other sports following test events in the polluted waters of Rio, FINA has announced that they’ve been informed of no such issues after the open water 10km test event a month ago: the official precursor to Olympic competition.
Following the Marathon Swimming Olympic Test Event, held in Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro (BRA) on August 22-23, 2015, the FINA Sports Medicine Committee, together with the concerned National Federations, made a follow-up with the 50 swimmers from 12 nations that took part in the competition.
Up to date, 26 days after the conclusion of the event, there is no notice of any subsequent health issue on the athletes that competed in Rio, from the following countries: Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan and Netherlands.
Consequently, the waters of the Copacabana beach were safe during the organisation of the Marathon Swimming test event.
The FINA Sports Medicine Committee, in co-ordination with the IOC, Rio 2016 Organising Committee and INEA (Brazilian State Institute for the Environment), will continue conducting tests and monitoring the quality of the waters in Copacabana beach, in accordance with International Standards.
The announcement comes a few days after a letter was leaked that FINA was criticizing the hosts of the 2016 Olympic Games for, among other things, the quality of the water, leading to a retort from Rio’s mayor.
This continues confusing messaging from the world’s swimming bodies regarding the water quality. Participating athletes were very complimentary of the course after the test event, but in the past FINA officials have said they weren’t concerned about the water quality. That even goes so far as having posted a report showing that the quality of the water where the open water events will be held at the Olympics is well within acceptable ranges. Simultaneously, it’s not clear that those acceptable limits conform with international standards.
Meanwhile, the International Swimming Federation, who claims to have had many reports of illness after their test event, says that they’re exploring the possibility of moving their Olympic events from Rio’s waters.
No Americans participated in the test event.
This seems so incredibly transparent how FINA/IOC isn’t much better than corrput organizations like FIFA…how many athletes are going to have to get sick or underperform because of the conditions they are essentially forced to deal with. Obviously underlying corruption is the reason Rio was given the bid in the first place…
A way to tie the illnesses to the water is to take a sample of the water and then compare it to blood or stool samples of the ill competitor. If the parasites are the same, voila!
Melissa Stockwell swam the paratriathlon test event and was in bed six days upon return from RIO. Its documented in her blog. I hope they dig a little further. Also I think the sailing competitors had issues.
TA – the challenge anyone is going to have is actually tying the sickness to the water. We hear about athletes coming up sick at big swim meets all the time – so it will be easy to brush those things off as related to food, to general disease, to climate change…it’s an easy attack to tie them to the water, but it’s harder to provide some evidence connecting the two. For example: medical experts and scientists have said “it’s unlikely that a German sailor got ill because of the water” (USA Today – http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2015/09/04/experts-unlikely-german-sailor-fell-ill-in-rios-water/71725492/).
Swimmers are not scientists, and so many accusations will be made on “gut instinct” (pun intended). That doesn’t mean… Read more »
There is something very common in Rio: the sudden change in temperature levels at Winter.
Yesterday was 39C(102F). In beginning of the week, it was 16C… Spring will begin next week, and I think we will have a really hot one.It is hard to stay healthy with many changes.
And today…40C!(104F)