This summer, when the Olympic Games are held in Rio de
Janeiro, marathon swimmers, sailors and triathletes will be asked to compete in
the highly polluted waters of Guanabara Bay and off nearby Copacabana
Beach. Any athlete
coming into contact with these waters has a high probability of becoming ill. Members of the United States junior national rowing team and
competitive sailors have become sick with diarrhea, vomiting and flulike
symptoms after training and competing around Rio, and they experience only
“incidental contact” with the water. Marathon
swimmers and triathletes will ingest this water — and the consequences could be
deadly.
I am a
long-distance open-water swimmer. Before marathon swimming was an Olympic
sport, I twice set the overall men’s and women’s record for swimming the
English Channel, and I was the first person to swim the Bering Strait from the
United States to the Soviet Union. Like all athletes, I overcame pain in
pursuit of my goals.
The
only time I failed was when I became gravely ill during a race in the Nile
River. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was already sick with dysentery
from training in the polluted water. Swimming through sewage, rotting rats and
dead dogs, I struggled to finish the race. I didn’t want to stop because I was
representing the United States, but after 15 miles, I nearly passed out. In the
emergency room I was told I was extremely dehydrated and that I could have
died.
I am
worried that the Olympic coaches and athletes heading to Brazil this year are
not well informed about these risks. Raw sewage from the Rio
metropolitan area’s 12 million people — enough to fill 480 Olympic-size
swimming pools — flows into Guanabara Bay every day. And that water flows directly
onto Copacabana Beach, the site of the marathon swimming competition.
Fernando Rosado Spilki, a virologist and expert in
water quality at Universidade Feevale in Brazil, was commissioned by The Associated
Press to test conditions in all the water competition sites. He identified virus levels 1.7
million times what would be considered hazardous at a California beach. Dr.
Spilki concluded that “the quantity of fecal matter entering the water bodies
in Brazil is extremely high.” He told me it was “very likely that a person
swimming in these waters will get infected.”
The
A.P. also asked Kristina Mena, an expert in risk management for waterborne
viruses at the School of Public Health at the University of Texas, to examine
Dr. Spilki’s results. She predicted that athletes who ingest just three
teaspoons of water from the bay have a 99 percent chance of infection.
When
Rio was awarded the Games in 2009, the Brazilian National Olympic Committee
acknowledged the unsafe conditions and announced plans to install eight water
treatment plants. But as of last year only one had been built. Asked about
Brazil’s commitment to clean up the water, Rio’s state environmental secretary
said, “It’s not going to happen.” He acknowledged that the
city will not meet its pledge to reduce pollution, and instead cited efforts to
prevent trash from entering the waterways through the use of booms, nets and
garbage-dredging “ecoboats” — an entirely ineffective approach to addressing
the threat caused by bacteria and viruses.
There
are fewer than 100 days to go until the Olympics. Brazil’s chief of security
for the Games and the sports minister have recently resigned, and the
president, Dilma Rousseff, is facing impeachment in the wake of a corruption
inquiry. It’s obvious the country will be unable to deliver on its exuberant
promise of a “Green Games for a Blue Planet.” Athletes should not have to swim
through sewage in pursuit of their Olympic dreams. Something must be done to
protect them.
This is
the Olympics: Athletes are willing to compete at all costs. Jordan Wilimovsky
of the United States open-water swim team told me that he trusted “that USA
Swimming won’t put us in a situation where swimming could cause us to get
sick,” adding, “Obviously though, I plan on swimming no matter what the water
conditions are.”
His coach, Catherine Vogt, said she was paying
attention to the issue and appropriately relying upon “water reports and
listening to” the United States Olympic Committee and USA Swimming, the
national governing body for the sport. But those organizations, and the International
Olympic Committee, should be among the loudest voices demanding a solution.
Jack Simon, a former president of the American
Swimming Coaches Association and past adviser to three United States Olympic
swim teams, told me, “Athletes should consider pulling out if the safety issues
are not addressed because no athlete should risk their health to compete in the
Olympic Games.”
The
president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, has said that
“the competition area for the athletes will offer safe and fair conditions.” It
is the committee’s responsibility to ensure this is so. The aquatic events must
be moved to safe, clean waters — and if that can’t be found in Brazil, they
must be transferred to another country.
Something similar has happened at least once before,
during the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, when the equestrian events
were held in Stockholm. Such
a move may be the only solution today, short of canceling these races. But that
would shatter the dreams of athletes who have trained most of their lives to
reach the Olympic Games. They deserve a chance to compete where the water won’t
hurt them.
SUDAMERICANO DE MALDONADO
O Blog Francisswim Esportes Aquáticos está lançando uma campanha de financiamento coletivo visando levantar fundos para o projeto de cobertura do maior evento de natação do ano, o X Campeonato Sudamericano de Natación y Águas Abiertas, de 8 a 13 de novembro em Maldonado no Uruguai. O projeto se chama “Sudamericano de Maldonado”. O nosso objetivo e promover, entre a comunidade aquática, a natação como um esporte que apresenta diversos benefícios para a saúde e bem estar da população. Nós publicaremos notícias, artigos de opinião, reportagens, vídeos sobre a competição no Uruguai. Estamos buscando arrecadar R$ 5.000 junto ao público. Para cada real doado, uma empresa irá doar outro real, num esquema chamado matching funds. Quem quiser contribuir pode doar a partir de R$ 10. Doações a partir de 100 reais receberão em troca “recompensas”. Doações de 100 reais receberão uma touca de natação personalizada, 150 reais uma camiseta das maratonas aquáticas Travessias Bombinhas, 200 reais o livro “A Copa Oculta”, do vereador de Porto Alegre, João Bosco Vaz. Doações a partir de R$ 500 reais, além de ganhar o kit completo de recompensas, concorrerão a um maiô ou bermuda de alta performance. Para doar, basta acessar o link: http://www.kickante.com.br/campanhas/sudamericano-de-maldonado
O QUE ACONTECE DE NOTÍCIA NO MUNDO DOS ESPORTES AQUÁTICOS VOCÊ LÊ PRIMEIRO AQUI - BLOG FRANCISSWIM Foram mais de 5.000.000 de VISUALIZAÇÕES no último ano
Francisswim Esportes Aquáticos é uma ferramenta única, abrangente, multi-linguas, uma referência on-line para a comunidade aquática. Informação vistas nos últimos 12 meses no facebook (1.200.000), Google+ (3.700.000), blog (350.000). Clique no link e visite
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment