RIO DE JANEIRO _ How you feel about the water in Rio depends almost entirely on what boat you're in.
If you're an Olympic sailor in a 49er, a speedy, two-person monohull, it's not so bad. Or at least, not as bad as expected, or not as bad as it was three years ago when Olympic teams started training here.
If you're a fisherman who has fished these waters for 35 years, as Gilmar Ferreira has, it just continues to get worse.
"They haven't cleaned anything," Ferreira said, in Portuguese, as he motored his boat through the bay Wednesday. "It would take 30 years to clean this up."
Ferreira's 40-foot boat, the HMJ5, all weathered wood with blue paint chipping away, is anchored in a small fishing marina in the upscale neighborhood of Urca, at the bottom of Guanabara Bay, only a few miles south of the sailing venue. From there, he heads out of the bay, past Sugarloaf Mountain and Copacabana Beach and into the Atlantic Ocean to fish.
There used to be dolphins in the bay. There used to be more fish. The water used to be cleaner.
"Swim?" Ferreira said. "I used to swim. Not anymore."
Of all the concerns over Rio's ability to host these games _ crime, infrastructure, Zika _ nothing has resonated like the water. The floating garbage, body parts washing ashore and athletes getting sick during training made the strongest, most tangible impression on the world.
Cleaning up the water, and Guanabara Bay in particular, was supposed to be the lasting legacy of these Olympics, not the athletes village (which will become luxury housing) nor the venues in the Olympic park (which are supposed to become training centers but will likely, as with so many Olympics past, slowly crumble into disrepair). There was never enough money, enough political muscle behind it.
The garbage and sewage that flow out of the hills and into the ocean, unchecked, will continue to flow unchecked after the Olympics have packed up and gone. They've cleaned up the sailing areas, noticeably for those who have been navigating in them for three years in preparation. The rest of the bay remains as dirty as ever, coated in places with a slick of tiny plastic debris even when there aren't visible chunks of garbage, let alone invisible bacteria lurking.
Whatever the legacy of Rio's Olympics turns out to be, it won't be the water. Everyone who plies the bay knows that now, the people who make their living on it and the people who compete on it. No one knows it better than they do.
"This is what we always say: We come here, we sail the games here, we leave," said Ivan Bulaja, a Croatian-born coach for the Austrian team. "The people of Rio, maybe something should have been done for the people here, for their futures. Not for us."
