I thought about swimming in that shite, and I nearly threw-up in my mouth. I can't imagine.
If I were good enough to qualify, would I? Damn straight I would. For some, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I can understand and empathise. I spoke to a buddy of mine- Brian Storey- who sailed for Canada in (I think) Barcelona. He said he'd go, risks be damned. The Olympic experience is THAT incredible.
The triathletes only need to go 1500 meters, and for those top guys, that's under 20 minutes. The open water guys need to go 10 KM, just shy of 2 hours. It's those guys that are going to be exposed the most.
My city is and has always been a mess but there's a whole bunch of exaggeration and sensationalism on the coverage. Pollution and garbage like you see in the photo is definitely a big problem but it is mostly constrained to certain specific areas close to shore. In order to avoid the spreading of this flotsam, there are things like buoys and netting in place and cleanup boats. I'm not pretending that it is all rosy but things in most of the areas are not his bad, least of all where the competitions will be. You got to realize that the Guanabara Bay is huge, about 3 times as big as the English Bay and Burrard Inlet put together. I have sailed there many times and people fish there regularly, just not close to these "prime" photo spots. As for the beaches (where swim sports like the triathlon will be) they are all open to the sea and this is not an issue at all. I laughed when I read the AP report saying that people shouldn't get in the water or sand anywhere or they'd likely get deathly sick. Tell that to the millions of Brazilians and tourists that go to those same beaches every day of the year...
The whole thing is so stupid that I shouldn't even get pissed about it but I do. Take the Zika scare, as well. It's frigging winter in Brazil, for heaven's sake. I've been there for 2 weeks and there're zero mosquitoes around. You are more likely to get an infected mosquito bite in Florida right now than in Rio.
Again, not trying to pretend Rio doesn't have a shitload of problems (see what I did there?) but same as it was leading up to the WC2014 the media is making it way more of a disaster zone than it is. The athletes will be fine but the sad thing is that these games will come and go and my countrymen will be left with a big bill to pay and the same unsolved (unsolvable) problems with violence, corruption, pollution, etc...
I get it, and the reality is I'd trust a local more than the media. The photos are still gross, and I still want to throw up (in my mouth) when I envision swimming in that stuff.
I've surfed in Peru (Mancora, Lima) where they also have similar raw sewage issues, but there are also many good spots with enough open water where the local go that you just assume is safe, and by all accounts felt safe in the water. I mean, it's surfing, so for that there really needs to be an open bay with a lot of water turnover.
Maybe I was surfing and swimming in poo poo, who knows. It looked clean, and I didn't get overly sick (funny, my roommates got deathly ill, so...maybe?). Some fairly normal travel / stomach issues, nothing a little cocoa tea didn't cure.
What a great start, and from what I could watch (TV on in the office, but too many things going on), I liked their attempts at playing possession football even with a player short. A big improvement over what we had to watch during the WWC.
La Señora is happy because she gets to watch swimming again. She's still griping about a perceived lack of water polo though...
Highlights for the CDN women's footy team:
* Buchanan playing from the back. She is a presence.
* Beckie in attack. She's looking the heir apparent to Sinclair, and definitely will take away some of the extra attention teams pay to her on the field
Lowlights:
* wtf was the keeper thinking? There was no way she needed to be out that far
* backline is incredibly suspect without Buchanan out there. Still way too many brain farts and forced bad passes.
Rugby 7s have been fun to watch although they weren't able to get it done against the Matildas this morning.
Brutal crash for the Dutch cyclist. Looked like she just started going sideways and her front wheel locked up.