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After the turmoil, time to celebrate
RIO DE JANEIRO: The most crisis-ridden Olympic Games in history opens here on Friday with Rio organisers hoping to draw a line under a turbulent seven-year build-up
RIO DE JANEIRO: The most crisis-ridden Olympic Games in history opens here on Friday with Rio organisers hoping to draw a line under a turbulent seven-year build-up to the greatest sporting show on Earth.
Football legend Pele is tipped to ignite the Olympic flame at Rio’s iconic Maracana Stadium in the Opening Ceremony, as the four-yearly celebration of sporting endeavour arrives in South America for the first time.
Olympic chiefs will hope the ceremony marks the start of a 17-day carnival of sport, a feast of drama. Usain Bolt will compete under the gaze of the Christ the Redeemer statue while the golden sands of Copacabana will host the spiritual homecoming of the beach volleyball tournament.
HANGOVER
Yet the sporting spectacle comes after a frequently chaotic buildup which at times has threatened to leave the city nursing a nasty hangover before the party even starts. When Rio won the race in 2009, the 2016 Olympics looked set to be the crowning glory of a dynamic Brazil. But a brutal recession, double-digit unemployment, fears about the mosquito-borne Zika virus, embarrassing infrastructure stumbles and a political crisis that led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff have all but extinguished the euphoria.
More than one million tickets, or 20 percent of the total, including for coveted events such as the men’s 100-metres final, remained unsold as of Wednesday.
Several plans to transform Rio have long since been abandoned, including a pledge to clean up the city’s filthy Guanabara Bay. That failure means athletes in Olympic sailing and windsurfing events will be forced to compete in a toxic soup of raw sewage from half of the city’s population. A blanket of 85,000 military personnel and police will be draped over the city to ward off the threat of terror attacks.
