RIO DE JANEIRO -- Abby Johnston had just advanced to the finals of the three-meter springboard Sunday, but she was still being asked about green water, brown water, chemical reactions and pool draining.
The affable American, who dubbed the diving pool at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Center "The Swamp," setting off a flurry of headlines and social media backlash from sensitive locals, could not escape it.
Six days had passed since the pool first turned green, then slowly brown, with Rio officials Sunday blaming a contractor for mistakenly mixing hydrogen peroxide with chlorine, causing the adverse reaction. And who else but Johnston to ask for her reaction to it all?
"My chemistry brain is like ... I did reactions [in school] with that stuff," said the soon-to-be third-year Duke med student, shaking her head. "Well, that's interesting."
Interesting, and as it turns out, inconsequential to many divers who, confident that officials were being honest when they said it posed no health risk, simply did not seem to mind. Other than complaining about the smell, some even said the murky water was an advantage because it allowed them to better distinguish between the water and the sky as they flip and spin.
For Johnston, the only American to advance to Sunday's final as teammate Kassidy Cook missed the cut by one position in 13th place, nothing concerning the water color really matters anymore.
"It's one more day. It's fine. I don't care," said Johnston, who finished the semifinals in fifth place. "It's swampy, but whatever. I'm diving fine with it, so if they keep it, it's fine with me."
Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada called it "an embarrassment" to Rio organizers in a press conference Sunday, and announced that the also-murky pool adjacent to the diving pool, which had been used for water polo, will be drained and filled with nearly a million gallons of clear water from a nearby practice pool.
Andrada promised the draining and refilling would be finished by Sunday for the start of synchronized swimming -- an event in which it is especially necessary to see underwater.
"Wow, that's going to be an impressive feat if they can pull it off," Cook said.
The diving pool will remain in its current condition, something Johnston said has been an entertaining distraction.
"It's a fun thing for all of us divers to stand up there and talk about," she said. "We're all in this together."
Johnston said she "got a lot of hate" on social media after she called the pool "The Swamp."
"I'm not ragging on it," she said. "I know they're working their butts off trying to fix it. But it's kind of funny; I've never seen a pool change this way."
She certainly wasn't the only diver to have fun with it.
On Instagram, German diver Patrick Hausding, with hashtags #Hulk and #Shrek, posted a photo of himself and his teammates with a filter that made them all appear green.
"When I say it's a swamp, I'm kind of joking," Johnson said. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't affect how I actually go on the board. I spend like a nanosecond in the water, so whatever."