Canada's Jennifer Abel tucks as she dives in the women's three-metre springboard diving final at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
The colour for Canada's springboard divers in the Rio Summer Games will not be gold, silver or even bronze. It will be the murky green of the Olympic diving pool, the most lasting image of the competition.
Jennifer Abel entered Rio's three-metre diving events expected to deliver two medals for Canada. Instead, she twice finished in what is often described as the worst place of Olympic competition – fourth spot, just one step from the podium.
After narrowly missing a medal in the synchronized event with partner Pamela Ware last week, Abel again came up just short of a medal showing.
She was poised agonizingly close. With Chinese divers Shi Tingmao and He Zi dominating through the rounds, the duel in the individual three-metre on Sunday was between 24-year-old Abel and Italian diver Tania Cagnotto for the bronze. Despite a series of strong dives, Abel was unable to pull ahead of her main rival.
The two see-sawed for third place, with Abel surpassing the Italian in the second-to-last round. But then Cagnotto nailed her fifth and final dive. Abel was unable to match it, leaving her off the medal table.
Shi took gold and He took silver. Ware finished seventh.
"I know I wanted to bring two medals home and it's a bit sad that I'm at the foot of the podium," Abel said afterward, appearing far more composed than in the teary aftermath of her razor-thin loss in the synchro event. "But at the same time, I really fought to the end."
The diver from Montreal knew the stakes, and admits to being nervous on the diving board. "It was very hard to stay focused and not crack under the pressure, and I didn't today, and that's what's more important to me."
The Olympics are not only about heart-pounding competition. Just after the medal ceremony, Chinese diver Qin Kai appeared poolside and offered a marriage proposal on bended knee to a surprised silver medalist He. A tearful He nodded and spectators in the stands cheered.
But it was the colour of the diving pool that continued to generate discussion at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre. After days of off-colour water that began in the diving pool and spread to the water polo and synchronized swimming pool, Rio organizers took a self-admitted "radical" step: They drained the water in the non-diving pool overnight on Saturday and replaced it with water from a nearby warm-up pool.
That pool was clear and ready for use with only a few hours to go before the start of the synchronized swimming competition on Sunday morning, which requires the divers to see one another underwater.
"It was 11 hours of work, and it's fine," Rio 2016 Olympic Mario Andrada said. "It's perfect and good for the competition."
But the diving pool remained green, and still so opaque that the lanes on the bottom – and even the divers after they plunged in – were invisible from the surface.
Rio organizers said they couldn't replace the diving pool water because of the competition schedule, and would adjust its filters instead. However, Andrada said Sunday it would take "another cycle of 12 hours so the water can change its look."
The explanation from organizers about what exactly caused the problem in the first place has evolved almost as often as the colour. On Saturday, the manager of the diving venue, Gustavo Nascimento, said a contractor was at fault after pouring 80 litres of hydrogen peroxide into the water. It "neutralized" the chlorine, which "was asleep and not killing organics."
"Our contractor's failure is our failure," Nascimento said.
Though some water polo players complained of irritated eyes, Nascimento said the water did not pose a health risk.
Still, Andrada admitted the incident was an embarrassment.
"We are hosting the Olympic Games," he said. "The world is here, the best athletes are here, so the water comes to be an issue."
The problem was important enough that a representative for FINA, the international governing body of aquatics, looked into the possible health impact on divers. Hélène Morneau, the Canadian judge at the diving competition, said officials were concerned about eye or ear infections before concluding that the divers' health was not in danger.
She said she found the colour has improved slightly, but will likely remain greenish until the end of Rio's diving competition.
"The Brazilians are doing what they can, but we don't expect the water to become perfect by the end of the week," she said in an interview. "But as they say, 'The show must go on'."
Abel also made light of the hue and said it did not affect her. "I still have two arms, two legs, and I'm leaving Rio with a smile. So the green water doesn't matter."