Water woes for Commonwealth Games

Just when the organisers were congratulating themselves on an incident-free opening to the Commonwealth Games (CWG), swimmers from Australia and England reported falling ill with upset stomachs on Thursday.

For a brief while it looked like the CWG had stumbled on another hurdle of its own making, but CWG organising committee secretary-general Lalit Bhanot said tests indicated that there was no problem with water quality. More details on the tests are expected on Friday. An Australian team official told DNA that two swimmers had been affected by a stomach bug, but everybody else was competing as scheduled.

Reports on the number of afflicted fluctuated wildly. While some reports said 20 per cent of England’s team had been affected, Dave Richards, a spokesman for the team, said the numbers had been exaggerated, and that no swimmer had missed a competition.

“We have 541 athletes and officials in Delhi and over the 28 days since the first ones arrived, 7-10% have suffered a mild stomach bug which has lasted for 24 hours, requiring no treatment and has not prevented any athlete from missing training or competition. This figure is lower than what we had planned for.”

Two Australian swimmers — Hayden Stoeckel and Andrew Lauterstein — complained of vomiting and diarrhoea and withdrew from their races on Thursday. Some of their teammates, and a few England swimmers as well, had reportedly fallen sick, but there was no consensus on the numbers. Among the England swimmers affected by the stomach bug were medal winners Fran Halsall and Rebecca Adlington.

Steve Moneghetti, Australia’s chef de mission, said there were three cases, possibly of gastroenteritis. “We’ve got three cases that have gone probably to the next stage, rather than just a bit of an upset stomach, he’s (doctor) calling it an actual gastroenteritis. And there’s another five cases that are just the tummy bug,” he said.

“The doctor’s opinion… he doesn’t think it’s food related because it seems more confined to one particular sport and obviously we’re all eating the same food and there’s very few cases across the board. It seems like there’s more cases specifically in one sport.”

Games Federation chief Michael Fennell moved swiftly to quell further speculation. “We must handle this immediately,” Fennell said. “If there is something that is unsafe, you can’t swim in that water. We have to deal with it. It’s a matter we have to deal with the greatest urgency.”

Commonwealth Games organising committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi is due to address a press conference on Friday.