The diving pool on Wednesday. Photo via Adam Pretty/ Getty

On Wednesday a Rio spokesman said the green diving pool, “should go back to classic blue colour during the day.” On Friday the still-green diving pool—set to host the women’s three meter springboard prelims in fewer than four hours—was closed:


On Tuesday Rio organizers blamed the color change on a “proliferation of algae,” before explaining on Wednesday that they’d ran out of a necessary chemical, which dropped the total alkalinity of the pool. But given that they had around 36 hours with nobody using the pool—there were no diving events scheduled for Thursday—and couldn’t get rid of the green color, it remains to be seen whether they actually know what the problem is. Great Britain diver Jack Laugher, for one, speculates that dye from the advertising boards surrounding the pool are leeching into the water.


In the meantime there’s another, probably related, problem:



Update (3:09 p.m. ET): The women’s diving prelims have begun as scheduled, and the water is noticeably less green:

Photo credit: Wong Maye-E/ AP


But it is still doesn’t have that “classic blue color” and is much more green than it was on Monday:

Photo credit: Wong Maye-E/ AP