Rio water not an issue - Alan Cotter

  • 01/08/2016
Rio water not an issue - Alan Cotter

Rowing New Zealand's Alan Cotter isn't at all worried about the state of the water at the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas - the site for the Olympic rowing regatta which starts this weekend.

There has been speculation that pollution in the lake would cause disruption to the competition but Rowing NZ's high performance director Cotter is happy with what he has encountered in the week he's spent in Rio.

"It's fine, it looks like Karapiro, some of the organisers have said you could go swimming in it, we are comfortable with it," he said.

"As long as it's fair for all lanes, that's the way they want it and from what I've seen here the last week that's exactly what it is.

"We are certainly taking precautions with hand sanitizers, drink bottles in plastic bags going out on the boats and washing the oars but so far so good."

The New Zealand team is expected to bring home a lot of medals from the regatta but Cotter isn't setting the target too high.

"We have a target of five medals, so that's our first target.

"We haven't got it down to boats, we have 11 boats here, I know I'm not giving much away but we've had a good preparation this summer in Europe where at the last world cup event in Poznan we had all the crews medal so that's a good start."

The race programme officially gets underway on Saturday night (NZT).

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