Crikey! Australia’s 2032 Olympic organizers want rowers to compete in a crocodile-infested river
"No reason to be looking at alternatives," Queensland official says.
Team Germany, second from bottom, competes in the women's quadruple sculls rowing final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, July 31, 2024, in Vaires-sur-Marne, France. | Ebrahim Noroozi Organizers of the 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane, Australia, say they’re sticking with plans to hold Olympic rowing and sprint canoeing events in a river hundreds of miles north that’s home to deadly crocodiles known as “salties. ” “We are committed to it, we’re not looking at alternatives.
The rowing will be at Rockhampton,” the Queensland state Olympic minister, Tim Mander, told reporters recently. “There’s no reason to be looking at alternatives when you have the level of confidence that we have. ” But there’s new scrutiny on using the Fitzroy River as a competition venue, first proposed a year ago.
Last month, some 500 rowers signed an open letter that demanded “a rethink,” The Independent, a British newspaper, reported. Their concerns, which include investing in a venue so far from the region’s population center as well as conditions, come as the international sports federation World Rowing is set to assess the river with a decision on its suitability for competition expected mid-year, the newspaper said. The danger posed by the river’s saltwater crocodiles has been downplayed by many Australians, although the country’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said before the venue location was made official last year that it probably should be someplace else, according to The Guardian .
Albanese told a radio station then that the Fitzroy was a “great river” for a walk, “but I’m not sure that having rowing there, although I’ve got to say, people might break world records. ... They’d want to go pretty quickly wouldn’t they?