100 meter freestyle swimming in a nice, clean, piranha-free swimming pool? That's cute, Summer Olympics! REAL men swim at the brutal Amazon Olympics, where surviving the event itself is its own reward:
Poised on the starting blocks at the Olympics, the 15 swimmers had good reason to feel apprehensive. But the cause of their nervousness was not the race itself – it was the piranhas, anacondas and crocodiles lurking in the turbid waters below. [...]
The swimming events all take place in the murky waters of the Loretoyaco river, a tributary of the Amazon. Waiting for her 100m freestyle race, Lina Castro, a 20-year-old member of the Tikun indigenous community, gazed into the water and considered the hazards. "When the race is about to start I need to be calm and not think about all the things that live in the river," she said.
Toby Muse of The Guardian reports: Link (Photo: Paulo Santos)