Great Britain’s Nick Dempsey got off to a promising start with a pair of wins on the opening day of the Olympic sailing competition on a picturesque Monday afternoon at Marina da Gloria, as concerns over the quality of the water were at least temporarily put aside.
“Today was the best it’s ever been,” the Norwich-born windsurfer said of Guanabara Bay waters. “You’re always really nervous when you’re winning a race and you’re going fast and you think the only thing that can go wrong is you hit something. I was constantly worried about that but I didn’t hit anything. That’s pretty good for Rio.”
Dempsey, who captured silver on home waters at London 2012, took the opening race to kick off the 11-day regatta in a time of 17min 53sec, ahead of Greece’s Vyron Kokkalanis and Hong Kong’s Chun Leung Michael Cheng, amid a crisp breeze of 10 to 12 knots from the south-east. Piotr Myszka of Poland, who is looking to become the first reigning world champion to win Olympic gold, finished 28sec off the pace in fourth.
He then took the second race in 20min 1sec ahead of Kokkalanis and Dorian van Rijsselberghe of the Netherlands, before finishing second to the Dutchman in the third.
The quality of the water in which more than 1,300 athletes in 40 events will be competing – the sailors, the rowers, the open-water swimmers – was among the topmost concerns entering these Games. A small fraction of the sewage from the city’s seven million residents is treated before it’s emptied into the water, exposing the athletes to the types of viruses that can lead to diseases such dysentery and hepatitis.
An Associated Press study of the water last year concluded that ingesting three teaspoons of the water would result in a 99% chance of infection, with Brazilian TV reports having estimated that 8,200 litres of sewage reach the bay per second and 100 tonnes of rubbish a day.
Brazil’s bid for the 2016 Games included a promise of an 80% cut in the flow of pollution into the bay through an expansion of the sewer network and the construction of river treatment units. Yet sanitation reform activists have claimed the IOC’s pledge was broken, while the governing body rejected calls to relocate the events saying that the water meets international standards.
But the world’s best seafarers had little reason to complain on Monday afternoon. Italy’s Mattia Camboni, who finished 11th, 13th and fourth in the day’s three windsurfing prelims, agreed the water was as good as it gets in Rio.
“Today the water was clean,” said Camboni, who’s been training here for the past year in advance of the Olympics. “I remember in December we came and the water was really, really bad. Now it looks OK. I’ve seen worse.”
The 20-year-old from Civitavecchia said he wasn’t taking too many precautions due to the water quality aside from washing his wetsuit every day.
“It’s not very bad, now it’s OK. It’s like everywhere. In my city sometimes it’s worse than here,” he said.
For many, worries over debris seem to be more pressing, an issue that prompted organisers to use specialised trashpicking boats in preparation for the events. Camboni said he saw France’s Pierre le Coq briefly catch a plastic bag during the third race, slowing him down. Le Coq came in 14th after seventh-place finishes in the first two.
“If the plastic bag is not very big you jump with the power of the sail and if you’re lucky the plastic bag will go away,” Camboni said.
Robert Scheidt’s attempt to medal at a sixth consecutive Olympics got off to a rocky start when he finished 23rd in the first race – 2min 38sec behind winner Tonci Stipanovic of Croatia – but the Brazilian rebounded nicely to win the second in his return to the laser class where he captured his first medal at Atlanta 1996. The Sao Paolo native’s five total medals is an all-time joint high with Britain’s Ben Ainslie and Brazil’s Torben Grael.
France’s Charline Picon won the first windsurfing race in 21min 13sec ahead of Spain’s Marina Alabau Neira, who won the event in London. Coming in seventh was Britain’s Bryony Shaw, a 2008 bronze medallist and second-place finisher at three of the past four world championships, who is aiming to become the fourth Briton to win multiple medals in the sport after Sarah Webb and Sarah Ayton in the Yngling (2004 and 2008) and Shirley Robertson in the Europe and Yngling (2000 and 2004).
Picon finished a scant five seconds behind Italy’s Flavia Tartaglini in the second race. Ireland’s Annalise Murphy won the first women’s laser radial race in 50min 57sec, besting defending Olympic champion Xu Lijia of China by 29sec, but the Dublin native dropped to 14th in the second race.
Windsurfing competitors will compete in 10 preliminary races while men’s laser and women’s laser radial sail in 12. Each finisher earns points corresponding to their order of finish, with the 10 lowest scores after the prelims – allowing for one dropped score – advancing to the medal race.
Dempsey, for one, was relieved over the state of the water and could only hope the quality keeps up over the remaining nine days of the competition.
“I was pretty nervous this morning, really nervous,” he said. “In training it’s been going really well. I’ve been sailing really fast. I was just nervous about something not happening, something just not quite going right. But today was absolutely perfect, it couldn’t have gone better.”
