Sailors and windsurfers training for the 2016 Summer Olympics set for Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay will be subjected to raw sewage and pollutants if they are looking to train in the Olympic waters.
Not only that, but Olympic contenders worry that debris, from couches to corpses, prevalent in the polluted waters will cause them to capsize during one of the world’s highest-stakes competitions.
Nico Delle Karth, an Austrian sailor preparing for the 2016 Olympics, said it was the foulest place he had ever trained. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Delle Karth told The New York Times.
Garbage bobbed on the surface, everything from car tires to floating mattresses. The water reeked so badly of sewage that he was afraid to launch his boat from shore.
John D. Coates, an International Olympic Committee vice president, said last month that Rio’s preparations were “the worst I have experienced.”
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