Pollution in the Olympic rowing lagoon in Rio de Janeiro was not responsible for illness among US athletes at an Olympic warmup last weekend, Brazilian organizers said on Tuesday.
“There is absolutely no evidence to link the water quality and the illnesses,” Rio 2016 Organizing Committee spokesman Philip Wilkinson said.
USRowing said four coaches and 11 athletes from an about 70-strong US team got ill during the weekend’s world junior championships, which were held as a test event ahead of the Summer Games in 12 months.
The lagoon has previously been criticized over its pollution levels, but Olympic organizers said the waters were clean enough for the competition, while USRowing also said it had no proof that the lagoon, located in the heart of the city, was to blame.
“It would be easy, but irresponsible for us to immediately assume that the rowing course is the main or sole point of exposure that caused the illnesses,” USRowing chief executive Glenn Merry said in an e-mail.
“While we are aware that the lake is polluted, we are not jumping to the immediate conclusion that the illness was a result of the lake pollution for two reasons,” he said.
The controversy blew up after a US media report quoted the US team doctor saying she suspected the lake might be to blame.
However, Merry said the first team member to feel sick was a coach “who did not row on the lake.”
Meanwhile, a female single sculler who capsized and even “consumed some amount of lake water ... had not yet shown any symptoms of illness,” Merry said.
The US rowing body underlined that team members also got sick during other foreign trips.
“Recently in Italy, our senior team had six athletes become ill out of 25,” it said.
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said tests in the lagoon have shown “potential health risks based on the fluctuation of E.coli contamination.”
However, the risk was considered to be acceptable.
“Athletes will not have significantly increased health risk” if they kept contact with the water to a minimum, Jasarevic said in an e-mail.
This would mean avoiding “ingestion of water by rowers,” Jasarevic said.
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