Going green: Changes in water color at water polo, diving

“FINA can confirm that the reason for the unusual water colour observed during the Rio 2016 diving competitions is that the water tanks ran out some of the chemicals used in the water treatment process”, the statement said. The person added that certain unknown components of the city water that goes into the pool after treatment might have been responsible for the imbalance. “These are things that, it’s the Olympic Games, you can’t have that”.

Australian water polo players have complained of stinging and teary eyes after another Olympic pool turned green at the Rio games on Wednesday morning.

Pictures and reports were surfacing – at about the same time as FINA’s statement – of the water apparently starting to turn green over at the water polo pool, which is next to the diving pool.

“I don’t know what’s happened”. “But I’m not sure what that means”.

The water polo pool, left, has now turned green, just like the diving pool, right.

The problem also affected the synchronised swimming pool to a lesser degree on Tuesday with athletes puzzled and concerned. FINA says that the FINA Sports Medicine Committee conducted tests on the water quality and concluded that “there was no risk to the health and safety of the athletes”, and as such made a decision to proceed with Tuesday’s diving events anyway.

Ruolin Chen, the Chinese diver who won the synchronised 10m platform diving gold with Huixia Liu, said they had not been negatively influenced by the different colour. “We test the water every day with the same parametres and the results were exactly the same as with the blue pool”.

“A sudden change in alkalinity, that was the reason”, said Rio spokesman Mario Andrada in a briefing on Wednesday.

Athletes have continued to compete in the pools while officials repeatedly reassure there is no health risk in either pool, but they do have some hesitance.

Andrada said one problem was that while the pools had hosted divers before the Olympics, it was a smaller number of people than had used it in recent days. The diving and water polo pools are part of a permanent facility opened in 2007. “We probably failed to note that with more athletes the water could be affected”, Andrada said.

“The independent group confirmed our assessment and confirmed the measures taken to bring the pool back to its normal colour and normal chemical state are correct”.