Rio organizers explain why the Olympic diving pool turned green, and it makes them sound pretty dumb

The green diving pool during the Rio Olympics has been a mystery. We witnessed overnight the pool turn from a perfect, pristine blue to a swamp-like green, prompting all sorts of theories on what happened. Now we have the answer ... we think.

Initially many believed the problem to be an algal bloom, which made sense in looking at the pool — but that didn’t explain empirical accounts from divers that the pool was extremely chlorinated. It turns out there WAS enough chlorine in the pool, and something else.

There are two schools of thought on how a pool should be maintained, but it’s universally known that you don’t mix hydrogen peroxide and chlorine. Either is fine on its own, but combining them causes big issues.

It’s unclear why the combination allowed the pool to turn green. I spoke to Dr. James Healy, a chemistry professor about what might have happened.

Despite some corners of the Internet suggesting pairing hydrogen peroxide with chlorine creates hydrochloric acid, he doesn’t believe this to be the case.

“Unless that formed super concentrated HCL (hydrochloric acid), it shouldn’t have been green. That concentration would have eaten flesh off bones. I use concentrated HCL and it’s clear.”

I asked if whether combining the two could have prevented the pool from being cleaned effectively, and he did not have a definitive answer.

“It’s possible, but peroxide is very short lived and unstable.”

There isn’t time right now to find a definitive reason why this happened. The fix needs to be immediate to the water polo pool in order for synchronized swimming to be on time. The diving pool will take longer to correct itself.

This explanation is bad, no matter which way you slice it.