Winning might smell like excrement at this year’s Olympics.
Tokyo Bay, which is slated to become the venue for events such as triathlon and marathon swimming, has faced recent cleanup efforts — yet the water still smells terrible.
The “futuristic landscape” was chosen “at the strong request of international sporting organizations,” according to the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, but now is riddled with issues of water quality, smell, and the possibility of sewage leaking into the bay.
This is not a new issue for the Summer Games, nor is it a recent development for the bay. An August 2019 test for the swimming section of the Paratriathlon World Cup was called off after E. coli bacteria were found at twice the limit allowed by World Triathlon in Tokyo Bay.
Executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association John Leonard requested in 2019 that the races take place in another body of water, as the E. coli levels were consistently too high. Still, organizers of the Summer Games claim that the E. coli levels remain within the “agreed limits” on an average day.
One athlete said the venue “smelled like a toilet,” according to the Asahi newspaper. Since then, Tokyo has worked to clean up its water, but the problems remain.
Tokyo poured 22,200 cubic meters of sand into the bay to support water-cleaning organisms, created a three-layer polyester screen to protect the bay from E. coli and built storage tanks to hold wastewater. The director of the Planning and Promotion Division of the Bureau of Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020, Koichi Yajima, told Bloomberg that the water is safe for athletes to compete in. But the venue still is plagued by bad smells and the possibility of E. coli contamination.
Many athletes and residents are hesitant to dive in, as the smell is still less than desirable. Moreover, some scientists believe that the efforts of the local government cannot compensate for years of poor water quality.
Yukio Koibuchi, a former associate professor at Tokyo University’s Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, told Bloomberg that the screening system “won’t reduce the inflow of E. coli much” as bacteria could simply go under the screens.
Tokyo lacks a drainage system specifically for its sewage, so the wastewater of the city’s 30 million residents feeds into seven rivers and dozens of smaller bodies of water. This water supposedly is treated before it flows into the bay, but around 14 times a year, large amounts of rainfall allow the water to flow right into Tokyo Bay completely untreated.
The triathlon begins on July 26, and there are expected to be heavy showers on July 27, which raises the possibility of increased sewage in the water. As there are further triathlon races on July 27 and 31, plus the marathon swim between Aug. 4 and 5, the possible increased E. coli levels could be detrimental to the future of those events.
Certain Olympic teams are taking it upon themselves to test the water up until competition begins, and there have reportedly been discussions between athletes concerned about the safety of competing in Tokyo Bay.
The Summer Games claim to have a plan if the water quality is too poor to swim in, but did not disclose what that would look like.