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Why Rio Olympics diving pool turned green is finally revealed as games bosses come clean

News

The world was left scratching its head this week when the Olympic diving pool suddenly turned GREEN.

The water in the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre had been the traditional blue when Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow won a diving bronze medal on Monday.

But by the time the synchronised 10m platform event took place the next day it had turned a distinct shade of emerlald.

Now the reason behind the mysterious change has been revealed.

According to games bosses, an unauthorised dump of 80 litres of hydrogen peroxide was to blame.

The chemical allowed algae to grow at a pretty speedy rate.

Gustavo Nascimento, director of venue management told the Lad Bible the hydrogen peroxide is used to clean pools, but it shouldn't have been mixed with chlorine.

"We were not consulted; our contractor's failure is our failure," he added.

After the amazing switch in colour, spectators pointed out that the water in the opposite pool was still the same shade of blue. But it was feared that a build-up of algae led to the colour change.

But it was the latest in a series of mishaps and problems for Rio 2016 organisers.

Food is so scarce at many of venues that organisers took drastic action yesterday.

Rio organizing committee spokesman Mario Andrada told how they were "allowing people to leave the venues for food and water because this eases the pressure" to supply food and drink inside the gates.

They say several suppliers failed to deliver supplies.

Andrada says it will get better "with new food trucks, more efficient water supply, and free water supplies for the public standing in line.

But the struggle to sell tickets was another major issue - with row upon row of empty seats at the beach volleyball, one of the country's favourite sports.

The 12,000-seater stadium at the iconic Copacabana beach venue was around 20 per cent full when the Brazil women's team walked out onto court.

Larissa Franca, one of the host nation's top players, and Talita Antones took on Russians Evgeniya Ukolova and Ekatrina Birlova.

They won in a whirlwind 36 minutes of cheers and applause from the home crowd but organisers later confirmed just 4,400 spectators had turned up on Sunday.

Many people have taken to Twitter and other social media to complain about the long queues for the various events with tens of thousands of spectators waiting for up to 90 minutes to get into venues.

Officials reportedly try to speed up the entry process by abandoning X-ray machine checks - raising concerns over security.

The organising committee has pledged to look at the problem of the long queues and to review the checks in place to keep people moving.

But they revealed last week that more than one million tickets were on sale.

On the eve of the opening ceremony, just under five million of the 6.1 million tickets available had been sold.

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