Olimpiada Rio 2016

Rio-2016 Golf Course Will Have Signs Warning Of Alligators

Returning to the Olympic Games after 112 years, the golf competitions of Rio-2016 may be interrupted by a broad-snouted caiman or some capybaras.

As there real chances that could occur, the fans who attend the matches of this sport, which was invented in Scotland in the 15th century - though there are records that the Romans already played a very similar game before Christ - will be warned of the areas where the animals live by signs spread throughout the golf course.

The Olympic Games' organization has confirmed that there will be a team of at least five biologists at the venue. If it is necessary, they will have to transport the broad-snouted caimans to other parts of the golf course during the match.

The target is to preserve the animals. There are no risks to the fans or the athletes. This kind of alligator is very common in the region of Barra da Tijuca, in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro city, where the Olympic golf course is. They usually run away when there are many people near them.

The alligators might not even show up to see the best golfers in the world try to get a hole-in-one – a play in which the athlete manages to hit the ball into the hole in his very first attempt.

But there are good chances that other animals will be present. Not only the alligators and capybaras might interrupt the matches. The region's monitoring team has registered the presence of herons, pacas and sloths - as well as several species of amphibians and many invertebrates, such as the Fluminense Swallowtail.

The presence of many fauna and flora species – the place also has typical areas of sandbanks – is explained by the location of the golf course. It is relatively close to the sea and next to the Marapendi lagoon. Because the golf course is situated in an environmentally protected area, there was much pressure against its construction.

Those responsible for the construction of the venue say that the region is much more preserved today from the environmental point of view than it was before the project was carried out, which indicates that the presence of animals in the area could rise before the beginning of the Olympics.

If it all works out, and the animals don't get in the way, the Rio-2016 Olympics will be the third time that golf is an official sport in the Olympics. Prior to the Saint Louis Olympics (1904), golf had been an Olympic sport for the first time in Paris, four year earlier.

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

Read the article in the original language

Renato Sette Câmara/Prefeitura do Rio
Returning to the Olympic Games after 112 years, the golf competitions of Rio-2016 may be interrupted by a broad-snouted caiman or some capybaras
Returning to the Olympic Games after 112 years, the golf competitions of Rio-2016 may be interrupted by a broad-snouted caiman or some capybaras
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