Rio Sailing Waters Crash Renews Concerns Over Floating Rubbish

15th April 2015

MacDara Conroy

Rio Sailing Waters Crash Renews Concerns Over Floating Rubbish

#Rio2016 - The safety of Olympic sailors training and competing in Rio's dirty waters has been called into question after a 49er pair crashed into a floating object in recent weeks.

As Yahoo! News reports, Breno Osthoff and Rafael de Almeida Sampaio were training on 14 February in Guanabara Bay – the location for the sailing courses in next summer's Olympiad – when they crashed into a discarded plastic box of the kind used to transport fish.

Video of the incident, which captured the duo's boat slamming into the box and causing their dinghy to list, will only add to the chorus of disapproval over the host city's failure to fulfil its promises to clean up its heavily polluted waters.

"The impact broke the keel, damaged the hull, and as we turned we fell on top of the sails and scraped the two sails," said Osthoff of the incident earlier this month. "The damage was very significant and it is just unacceptable."

Yahoo! News has more on the story HERE.

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MacDara Conroy

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MacDara Conroy is a contributor covering all things on the water, from boating and wildlife to science and business

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