04 Aug 2015
Ipanema Beach – just outside the entrance to Guanabara Bay. Care to take a dip?
MUDDY WATERS: After the Associated Press (AP) ran its story on Rio Filth last weekend, it seems people are at last sitting up and taking notice.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has apparently told the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to get its act together to analyse virus levels in Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic waters.
And the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) has also apparently decided it’s time it started doing its own independent virus tests.
Talking to the AP, Peter Sowrey, CE of ISAF said: “We’re going to find someone who can do the testing for us that can safely cover what we need to know from a virus perspective as well as the bacteria perspective.”
“That’s my plan,” he added…
Hopefully, the end result of all this sudden breast beating and self chastisement will be for the Rio authorities to move the relevant sports to less inhospitable areas for the athletes.
And BB offers its thanks to Illinois based journalist and Lake Michigan sailor Glenn T McCarthy, who started beating the drum to alert MNAs and journalists to the Rio filth.
The potential for athletes to succumb to appalling illnesses following a dunking (or even a few drops of spray) in the Rio filth is enormous.
Just to reinforce the appalling level of contamination, here is one of Mr McCarthy’s lists that will give you cause to think:
Guanabara Bay is 17 by 19 miles, and has 55 rivers feeding into it, most of which have been declared dead by scientists, from the heavy pollution.
Today the daily untreated sewage water of 7,000,000 people is dumped into Guanabara Bay.
Rio Olympic Committee originally promised in their bid package to the International Olympic Committee to have 80% of sewage treated by the opening ceremony in 2016 (leaving 1,400,000 people’s sewage dumped daily).
Most recently, the Rio Organizing Committee said they would not reach the 80% goal, and now expect to be a little over 50% cleaned (leaving about 4,000,000 people’s daily raw sewage dumped into Guanabara Bay.
People who have sailed in Guanabara Bay have reported sailing past dead cats, dogs, cows and human bodies through the years.
While the fetid water is the concern for health, for the athletes fairness, the water is covered with trash with everything from couches, TVs, chairs, desks, garbage, etc, which can slow a boat down, cause it to capsize (sending the athletes swimming in the water) or stop them in a crash if an object is submerged providing an unfair playing field.
Some efforts have been made to rectify this, but for now those efforts have been shut down.
The famous Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches are just outside the entrance to Guanabara Bay, but surely they must lose some of their appeal after all these revelations?