Australia has arranged for Monday’s first arrivals, including canoeing star Jessica Fox and boxer Shelley Watts, to stay in hotels due to major safety issues in the athletes’ village including sewage flowing into showers. Russia team escape blanket ban from IOC for Rio Olympic Games Read more 
 
 “It’s just a matter of identifying the leaking pipes which has now been done largely throughout our building and then bringing in the workmen which is now happening to fix those pipes – it’s just tightening connections,” she said. The head of Australia’s delegation, Kitty Chiller, on Sunday raised concerns over “blocked toilets, leaking pipes and exposed wiring” inside the complex of high-rise apartment blocks intended to house athletes for the duration of next month’s Games. Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes took a swipe at the Aussies for complaining about the conditions, saying: “I almost feel like putting a kangaroo in front of their building to make them feel at home.” 
 
 Chiller had the perfect response. “I believe the Rio mayor when he heard about the complaints said he’d send over a kangaroo, that’ll look after things, and you said, ‘No, send us a plumber.’” 
 
 “We’ve already got a kangaroo, we don’t need another one. “We had a huge team of plumbers in here, they’ve done diagnostic testing on every pipe in every apartment in every bathroom on all our 14 floors,” Chiller told ABC News. Photo: Getty Images 
 
 "We decided to do a 'stress test' where taps and toilets were simultaneously turned on in apartments on several floors to see if the system could cope once the athletes are in-house. “Water came down walls, there was a strong smell of gas in some apartments and there was ‘shorting’ in the electrical wiring.” 
 
 She said other delegations, including those from Britain and New Zealand, were experiencing the same problems. Chiller said she would reassess the situation at the Village after further tests on plumbing and fire safety, but cautioned that “there is much work to be done.” More than 20 staff members have been unable to say in the village, and the first Australian athletes are due to arrive on Monday. We have been living in nearby hotels because the village is simply not safe or ready.” 
 
 Chiller and AOC chief executive Fiona de Jong had been attending nightly meetings on the issue and repeatedly expressed their concerns to the local organising committee and the IOC.  The mayor of Rio de Janeiro has hit back at the Australian Olympic Committee's concerns about the "uninhabitable" state of the athletes' village by cracking a joke about kangaroos. “We are confident that our accommodation is ready to receive athletes and will be to the highest standards within the village,” Team GB communications director Scott Field said in a statement. Chiller said that for those coming in the next three days alternative accommodation has been arranged but she remained confident the problems would be solved by Wednesday. The 31-building compound contains tennis courts, football pitches, seven swimming pools, with mountains and the sea as a backdrop, topped off by a huge dining-kitchen compound that is as big as three football fields. Earlier this year, Ilha Pura admitted it had sold only 240 of the 3,600 apartments – far below its expectations. “From the exterior it looks like the Hilton Hotel,” Tancred said. “But inside it’s not finished.” 
 
 The last time an Olympic Village was finished just on or after the deadline was Athens in 2004 when athletes recall the smell of fresh paint in their rooms and walking across the unfinished village green areas which featured half grass and half dirt.
– Australian athletes and coaching staff are in hotels instead of Rio's Olympic Village because the accommodations are in terrible shape, the head of the country's delegation says. Kitty Chiller says the problems include "blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed, and dirty floors in need of a massive clean," the Sydney Morning Herald reports. She says workers have been trying to fix the problems in the newly built accommodation blocks, which are supposed to house 18,000 workers and coaching staff, but when they turned on taps in several apartments at once, the "stress test" failed: "Water came down walls, there was a strong smell of gas in some apartments, and there was shorting in the electrical wiring," she says. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes scoffed at the complaints, saying the accommodations are better than what Sydney provided for the 2000 Olympics. "I am just about to put a kangaroo in front of their building so it can jump and make them feel at home," he said. The Courier Mail reports that Chiller retorted: "We've already got a kangaroo, we don't need another one. Get me a plumber, mate, get me a plumber." With less than two weeks to go until the games begin, the Australians aren't the only ones having problems. The Italians and Dutch have hired their own teams to get athlete accommodations up to scratch, the Guardian reports, though Rio authorities say hundreds of athletes from other countries moved in over the weekend without complaint.