Advertisement

Advice to Olympians competing in polluted Rio de Janeiro bay: Keep your mouths shut

Advice to Olympians competing in polluted Rio de Janeiro bay: Keep your mouths shut

Olympic marathon swimmers, sailors and windsurfers have always had a defined skill set: strength, balance and coordination.

Now, thanks to the organizers of the upcoming Rio Games, they'll have to add another: the ability to keep their mouths closed during competitions.

That's what health officials are advising after organizers admitted that clean-up efforts at Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay have failed and competitors will basically be swimming in a large outdoor toilet bowl.

One doctor told the New York Times that competitors  ``will literally be swimming in human crap."

Outside of the fact that this creates a potential treasure trove of unavoidable newspaper headlines (Olympians flush with pride at Rio, Medal hopes go down the tubes, Crappy performances dog Games), it adds yet another unsavoury layer to the problems facing Rio.

But concerns about rampant crime and the state of the athletes' village barely raise a stink compared with the prospects of swimming in filth - not to mention the prospects of bumping into a corpse.

“We just have to keep our mouths closed when the water sprays up,” Dutch sailor Afrodite Zegers told the Times.

That may or may not have prevented the gastrointestinal woes that befell members of the Spanish and Austrian sailing teams and one-quarter of the surfers who competed here last year.

The fact is the bay is a serious health hazard, which one might expect from a body of water filled with untreated sewage.

Recent tests showed that the bay's waters are rife with rotaviruses that can cause diarrhea and vomiting to potentially fatal drug-resistant “superbacteria.”

While you might think that these concerns would lead to a relocation of the competitions, the International Olympic Committee and the Brazilian government don't seem too worried about the possibility of Olympic athletes becoming seriously ill.

While they admit the city's bays are less than pristine, they say competition areas meet World Health Organization standards.

While Guanabara Bay may have high levels of ``crap", organizers point out that sailors and windsurfers will have limited contact with the water.

So as long as nobdy falls off a sailboat or windsurfing board, or gets hit in the face with spray, all should be well. At least, that's the official version.