It is common knowledge that water should be blue or at least a clear color. One would also think that such high profile competitions surrounding it, like the diving events in the Olympic games, would make the water they use live up to the expectation of quality and general cleanliness. However, the divers in this year's Olympics found a pool full of bright green water staring back at them as they looked down from the diving boards.
A spokesperson for the Olympic organizing committee in Rio denies knowing the reason why the pool had turned that color, reports the Wall Street Journal. Although the pool for the water polo events remained clear blue, this embarrassing mishap was yet to be fixed and remained green as recently as Monday morning, reports state.
Some people claim that the unnatural color of the pool threw a number of divers off during the event, resulting in poor performances. However, some divers claim that it helped with their orientation mid-dive due to the fact that the water was no longer the same color as the sky. Some of the more notable statements about the pool water came from the Canadian team who made a number of joking statements about it.
"What's kind of cool is it's a bit of a throwback. It feels like more of an old-time, traditional Olympics," says Canada's Mitch Geller. "I don't know what it's going to look like tomorrow, if it's not a swamp," he adds.
Vox reports that another Olympic pool has turned green and offered some insight as to why this is happening. Quoting FINA, they say that the green discoloration of the pool water is the direct result of an unbalanced pH level. Some sources claim that this is due to the fact that the event organizers have ran out of the chemicals needed to balance out the water's pH.
