Thirteen US Rowers Become Ill After Event at Olympic Site in Brazil

As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the Summer Olympics in less than a year, concern remains that the site for rowing and canoeing competitions and venues for other aquatic events are polluted and unsafe to athletes.

An investigation commissioned by the Associated Press, published last month, found Olympic water venues so contaminated with human sewage that it said athletes risked becoming violently ill.

With the countdown now to one year until the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Panasonic Brazil (PANABRAS) has announced that Panasonic Corporation and PANABRAS have signed an agreement to be the official technology partner for Rio de Janeiro’s Sugarloaf Mountain.

Two-time Olympic gold-medal rower and U.S. coach Susan Francia said in an interview with the AP that 13 athletes and four staff members, including herself, came down with various gastrointestinal illnesses during the team’s two weeks of training in Rio. Anyway, Germany seems impervious to water-borne bacteria and viruses.

In two individual e-mailed claims following a AP research, the Planet Health Organization confirmed it had been informing the Worldwide Olympic Committee “to broaden the medical foundation of indications to incorporate viruses”.

U.S. Rowing said Tuesday it was looking into the cause of the illness and that it was not possible to say what was to blame.

Sailing’s test event often acts as an indicator into who will be on the podium at the Olympic Games itself.

An aerial view of Rodrigo de Freitas lake.

The women’s pair of Sydney Payne (Brentwood College School/Toronto Sculling Club) and Yvonne Anguelov (Brentwood College School/Toronto Sculling Club) and coached by Stani Slavova were the best performing Canadian crew at this regatta. We’ve never experienced this.

However, according to the Chicago Tribune, the Rio state environment agency does not have the equipment or the trained personnel to carry out viral testing of water. “I’m struggling with what the right answer is to protect the rowers”.

“Everything from now on will be about getting the athletes as ready as possible for Rio, both inside and outside the pool”, Australia media manager Ian Hanson said.

“If they don’t recognize, or don’t wish to, we shall examine together what possibly fund our very own check and to do”.

“When you go around the city, you could tell that there’s definitely raw sewage in a lot of the canals, which you kind of know lead into the race course, but if I hadn’t seen the canals, I wouldn’t have known”, Delleman said.

But most athletes say they are still being told the venues are safe by officials in individual sports, so there is no reason not to stick to the program.

“We can’t move”, she said.