If you often feel the need to urinate as soon as you dive into the pool, it’s not because something is wrong with your body: it’s due to kidney activity and pressure. However, despite being an obviously unhygienic act, many admit to succumbing to that pressure, giving in to the basic needs of their bodies.

In the Olympic Games, there are no sharks or orcas threatening the physical integrity of the athletes. Instead, it’s the athletes themselves who have brought this societal taboo to light. Indeed, there is something unpleasant in the water of the Olympic pools in Paris.

That’s right. The world’s best swimmers, the supreme elite of their sport, “all pee in the pool.” And they don’t mind admitting it. Although many turn a deaf ear when asked, others confess without any scruples.

“I’ve probably peed in every pool I’ve been in,” confessed a cheerful Lilly King, a three-time Olympic athlete and former American gold medalist. “That’s just how it is,” she concluded with a laugh.

This statement, which began to draw attention, was also confirmed by butterfly swimmer Zach Harting, a representative of the U.S. team at the Tokyo Games three years ago. Harting recalled the first time he peed during a race, at a high school state championship in Alabama, when he realized he was running out of time to go to the bathroom since he was wearing his super-tight suit that was hard to remove.

“Every time I went to a pool after that, I only considered that I had swum in it if I peed in it,” Harting exclaimed to the astonishment of the journalists questioning him.

Swimmers insist it’s not a “lack of decorum” that leads them to pee in their Olympic habitat. “In major competitions, swimmers hydrate until the last possible moment while wearing ultra-tight suits designed to compress their bodies into the most hydrodynamic shape possible. It’s a dangerous combination,” explains the Journal, thus justifying the athletes’ controversial behavior.

Following a simple rule within this questionable habit, there are certain codes. If they need to pee in the pool, under no circumstances is it ethical to do so when someone is “right behind them.” "You should never swim in a warm zone," commented freestyle swimmer and Olympic medalist Cullen Jones.