NANTERRE, France—Swimming is a sport with only a few rules. No running on the deck. No diving in the shallow end. And definitely no peeing in the pool.
But here’s one of the dirtiest secrets of the Olympic Games: Everyone pees in the pool.
“I’ve probably peed in every single pool I’ve swam in,” said Lilly King, a three-time Olympian for Team USA. “That’s just how it goes.”
If you thought the Olympics was the culmination of four years of blood, sweat and tears, we regret to inform you that La Défense Arena in Paris will be overflowing with a different bodily fluid. It turns out that every athlete who takes a plunge into the Olympic pool will probably relieve themselves in there, too.
Zach Harting, who competed for the U.S. at the Tokyo Olympics, vividly remembers the first time he felt nature calling at an inconvenient time. He was about to compete in Alabama’s high-school state championships when he had the sudden urge to go. Unfortunately, he had already squeezed into his tight-fitting racing suit, which meant that a trip to the bathroom was a larger undertaking than he had time for.
In the end, he urinated in the suit, in the pool—and life as an athlete was never the same. “The world changed for me,” Harting said. “Every time I went to a pool after that, I only considered myself to have swam in it if I peed in it.”
This nasty habit isn’t just a lack of decorum. Swimmers insist there’s a good reason why they can’t do what most people learn by the age of four. At important competitions, swimmers hydrate until the last possible moment while also wearing ultra-tight suits meant to compress their bodies into the most hydrodynamic shape possible. It makes for a dangerous combination.
“I always have to pee,” said Tokyo Olympian Jake Mitchell, “because I’m so hydrated.” But swimmers know that after all the effort required to shimmy into their suits, a process that can take up to 20 minutes, going through the contortions again for a nature break isn’t worth it.
Tom Dolan, who won gold in the 400-meter individual medley at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics, remembers early versions of high-tech suits that went from his shoulders to his knees that effectively trapped urine inside them. “It was tiny, paper-thin material and it would bubble up,” he said.
Later in the aughts, when Speedo was developing its polyurethane LZR Racer suit that went down to the ankles, NASA engineers consulting on the project suggested adding ventilation to the legs. The idea was that any liquid or air that got trapped in the suit upon diving in could have an exit point.
Swimmers soon discovered that the vents were pretty good at letting another liquid exit their suits, too.
What happens once that liquid hits the water is a problem for anyone who has ever operated a swimming pool. The most common solution is copious amounts of chlorine.
According to Brian Spear, whose company handled the chemical filtration of the pools used for U.S. Olympic Swim Trials, the potent smell associated with swimming pools is the byproduct of odorless chlorine reacting with organic compounds in the water, like hair or dead skin. Or urine.
At that meet, where nearly 1,000 swimmers competed over nine days, Spear constantly needed to tweak the pH and chlorine levels to keep the water as clean as he could.
But a pool never stays urine-free for long. Which is why swimmers adhere to an unspoken code of conduct for underwater bathroom breaks. It’s best not to do it when other people are in close proximity. “You never want to swim through a warm patch,” said Cullen Jones, a four-time Olympic medalist.
The most talented swimmers are those who can multitask.
“I can actually pee as I’m swimming, which is kind of a gift,” King said. “It’s definitely a skill.”
For some expert aquatic urinators, that’s a bridge too far. “You’re crop dusting everyone,” Jones said. “That’s foul.”
The pool isn’t the only place at a swim meet that turns into an impromptu bathroom. Because swimmers must report to the ready room 15 minutes before their race, they are left with two dismal options if the urge strikes: hold it in or let it out right onto your towel or straight onto the deck.
Before the 400-meter freestyle at World Championships, two-time Olympian Katie Hoff remembered sitting next to a fellow American swimmer and “literally saw it roll down her leg and hit the floor,” she said. Hoff wasn’t fazed. “It sounds so gross to outsiders, but because there is so much chlorine you don’t even think about it.”
There is, however, one circumstance when no swimmers would ever relieve themselves in the water.
“If you have a drug test, you don’t pee in the pool during warm down,” Harting said. “That’s 101.”
|
