Man Dies After Swallowing Water from Chinese Swimming Pool

Going for gold...

BEIJING - China - A man has died and 3,158 swimmers were in critical condition today after swallowing water from a swimming pool in China's capital city.

Hundreds of paramedics and doctors were in attendance at the Mao Mao Municipal Pool in the Eastern province of the city 23 km from the Olympic village on Tuesday.

One man was fatally poisoned when he swallowed a mouthful of the pool's water which was laced with the urine and fecal matter of 47,000 swimmers in the gigantic Chinese public swimming pool.

"He was doing the breast stroke when a wave of yellow water entered his mouth. He swallowed the lot and he started choking and shaking violently," one of the swimmers who witnessed the incident recalled.

The man died immediately after swallowing the deadly soup of urine and faeces that was in the swimming pool.

The Chinese swimming pool in the Yao Stink district is able to accommodate 230,000 swimmers at one time and on Tuesday was at low capacity of just 47,000 eager swimmers.

A toxicologist noted after taking a sample of the water that even though there is a heavy concentration of chlorine in the pool's water, the urine and fecal matter consisted of nearly 90% of the mix.

"You can imagine what happens when 50,000 odd swimmers relax their bladders or bowels in the water. Some of the swimmers actually use the pool to wash in as well because they do not have bathrooms at home," Lao Xing Ding Dong told the Beijing People's Daily paper.