It was a picture-perfect Monday morning at Copacabana Beach, the kind that graces postcards and fills travel brochures.

Blue water lapping on the white sand beneath palm trees and a warm cloudless sky.

“It is a really nice day,” marveled Haley Anderson of Manhattan Beach, who decided to celebrate with a long swim.

Two hours later, Anderson stepped out of Guanabara Bay after finishing fifth in the women’s 10-kilometer marathon swim, 29 seconds short of a medal but none the worse for the experience.


And that wasn’t supposed to happen.

Days before the Rio Olympics opened, an Associated Press study suggested that athletes would be risking their health by swimming in the bay. Ingesting as little as three teaspoons of water, they were told, could cause serious stomach and respiratory illnesses.

“Rubbish,” said Britain’s Keri-Anne Payne, who admitted she drank plenty of water on her way to a seventh-place finish.

“The water quality, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.”


Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands also found it to her liking, pulling away on the final of four 2½-kilometer laps to defeat Italian Rachele Bruni by more than 17 seconds in 1 hour 56 minutes 32.1 seconds. Aurelie Muller of France touched the finishing board third, just ahead of Brazilian Poliana Okimoto, but was subsequently disqualified for pushing Okimoto down as both lunged toward the board.

“It’s the best result for Brazilian women’s swimming in history,” Okimoto said after winning the host country’s eighth medal in these Games. “God is Brazilian.”

Okimoto may be right about that. How else to explain the fact that Guanabara Bay’s infamously dirty, sewage-ridden water — a cesspool of infectious viruses and bacteria just two weeks ago — is suddenly as clear as bath water?

“I like the fact that I can see,” said Canadian Stephanie Horner. “Once my hand enters [the water], I can see it. It simulates a pool, that you can see what kind of goes underneath.”


Added Van Rouwendaal: “Copacabana is clean so I wasn’t worried at all.”

But that doesn’t mean the race went off with a hitch — this is Rio, after all.

The platform from which the swimmers were to start the race broke apart in high winds and rough waves last week. Games organizers promised to install a replacement platform over the weekend but the swimmers said they were quietly told Sunday that wouldn’t happen.

“You don’t really win off the start,” Anderson said. “It’s open water so you really have to go with the flow. We’re all used to last-minute changes like that.


“So you just kind of have to go with it and not worry too much.”

Anderson, a former USC swimmer with terrific range who narrowly missed making the 2012 Olympic team in the pool in 800-meter freestyle, won a silver medal in the marathon swim in London, finishing less than a half-second behind winner Eva Risztov of Hungary.

In Monday’s race she hung in the middle of a 26-woman pack, circling four inflatable buoys as a flotilla of more than 20 boats and kayaks followed alongside. A helicopter hovered above while a fishing trawler and a Brazilian warship were anchored in the distance.

But on the third lap Anderson began to fall back just as Van Rouwendaal began to pull away. And though the American closed fast, passing 14 swimmers on the final lap, it wasn’t fast enough to reach the medal stand.


“I didn’t set myself up going into that fourth lap to be successful,” she said. “I’m pretty happy with not giving up and kind of just settling. I fought all the way in.”

As for the water, Anderson said, “It tasted like ocean. My tongue is salty right now.”

Hungary’s Anna-Greta Olasz, a senior at Arizona State, found the conditions to her liking as well.

“We are swimming in this amazing place!” she bubbled. “It’s Copacabana. The venue is amazing. No clouds. Palm trees.


“What else can you ask for?”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com