The dirty secret of Olympic swimming: Everyone pees in the pool

livemint.com:

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.