The world’s vast Olympic conceit is that a host city should transform itself into a perfect Hollywood set of nice hotels, Olympic bus lanes and zero crime. According to this logic, winning an Olympic bid confers on a city a duty to prostrate itself for the benefit of people who visit for 20 days or so and then fly away again without looking back...
Rio Olympics 2016: The world's unrealistic demands of the Games are hurting the Brazilian people
Paul Hayward Chief Sports Writer, in Rio
2 August 2016
The Telegraph
Why has the world only now woken up to the huge socio-economic problems facing Brazil, asks Paul Hayward. (Above) The mighty Maracanã Stadium - once the largest in the world - in the shadow of Christ the Redeemer where the opening and closing cereminies will take place Credit: EPA
The Catastrophists could have their own flag in the opening ceremony. They could march around the Olympic Stadium shouting: the end is nigh. But first they need to answer a question. Why did it require their actual presence in Rio for them to care so much about sewage, corruption and mosquito-borne viruses?
Here at South America’s first Games, we are at that familiar point in a build-up when finding fault becomes a gold medal activity. And there is much fault to be found, in matters of life and health, which needs to be reported. But some of the scrutiny of Rio’s socio-economic condition is also deeply contrived. It suggests a level of concern that was simply not there before the rest of the world placed itself at risk of Zika, muggings and stomach upsets.
Why the sudden empathy/fear? Because Rio’s function is to give the world the Games it demands: a flawless carnival of sumptuous backdrops and infectious local enjoyment. Never mind sanitation, give us samba.
Health workers in the Sambadrome spray insecticide to combat the spread of the Zika virus in Rio de Janeiro
Anyone who has spent any serious time in Brazil knows it is not a place of constant dancing and sensuality: an image rooted in the football of the 1970s.
The world’s vast Olympic conceit is that a host city should transform itself into a perfect Hollywood set of nice hotels, Olympic bus lanes and zero crime. According to this logic, winning an Olympic bid confers on a city a duty to prostrate itself for the benefit of people who visit for 20 days or so and then fly away again without looking back.
This arrogance is now built into the Olympic and World Cup cultures, and it causes terrible damage. It forces the hosts into needless extravagance and leaves white elephants. It tells the local population that their sacred duty is to give every tourist a good time. Not just a good time, but a time free from any kind of hassle. In Olympia, you see, political and social reality must be suppressed until the International Olympic Committee’s spaceship lifts off and finds another city to land on.
Thomas Bach addresses the audience at the 29th IOC sitting Credit: Getty Images
Maybe it was a month spent covering the World Cup in 2014 that encouraged this awareness of how blithely we expect countries to drop everything for our benefit.
Then, football’s premiere tournament was dispersed across Brazil, with tales of construction budgets being ransacked by elites. In Rio the Maracanã was the sole focus. Now, the city has undergone a colossal $12 billion change to accommodate a much bigger spectacle that invades every centimetre of civic life.
As Brazil’s political establishment rocks and reels through a corruption crisis, the image of troops lining the main road in from the airport evokes the military dictatorships of the not-too-distant past. According to Amnesty International, there was a 103 per cent increase in police killings in Rio between April and June, with one Carioca (Rio citizen) killed every day. Since Rio won the Olympic bid in 2009, police have killed 2,600 people in their own city. Amnesty’s Brazil director, Atila Roque, says: “A shadow of death has set over Rio de Janeiro and it seems the authorities only care about how pretty the Olympic Park looks.”
Soldiers stand guard outside the Olympic Athletes Village Credit: Getty Images
Any reassurance to be felt about the huge military presence (85,000) comes with the knowledge that the soldiers and police are there to protect foreigners and intimidate the residents. It was the same story at the World Cup. This is a metropolis where one in seven live in favelas and the state governor recently declared a “state of public calamity”.
Against that backdrop, Rio is remarkably well prepared, even if some problems persist (how could they not, when a developing country is landed with the Games?). Many of the venues sparkle in the sun and the mountains and coastline add a stunning natural drama to the show that is about to unfold.
At the same time you fly down a special Olympic lane in an official bus, stare at the steaming lines of local traffic and think: what must they make of us, with our incessant demands and jumbo cans of mosquito spray?
The Faustian bargain Cariocas are meant to sign up to is that the Olympics are an infrastructure opportunity from the gods. When the rest of us leave, Rio will be left with better road and rail, a raised sensed of its place in the world.
London 2012 peddled this line too. The idea there was to “rebalance” Britain’s capital, bringing the east level with the west. “We want to help make a better future,” Thomas Bach, the IOC president, told Rio, slipping into the kind of Messianic ‘legacy’ language that was meant to be discredited.
You take a few chances coming to Rio. Even Rivaldo, a former World Player of the Year, warned earlier this year: “I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio to stay home.”
But those risks are trivial compared to the indignities suffered every day by the locals, who have no laminated passes and no army to protect them.
The Rio Games have even been labelled ‘The Apocalympics’ by online hooligans in far-off places. The anxiety runs so free that so-called medical experts are telling visitors to the beaches and lakes: “Don’t put your head under water.” If you need an expert to tell you that, you should probably be at infants school, not at the Olympics.
The Games of the XXXI Olympiad start on Thursday
Rio Olympics 2016: The world's unrealistic demands of the Games are hurting the Brazilian people
Rio Olympics 2016: The world's unrealistic demands of the Games are hurting the Brazilian people
Paul Hayward Chief Sports Writer, in Rio
2 August 2016
The Telegraph
Why has the world only now woken up to the huge socio-economic problems facing Brazil, asks Paul Hayward. (Above) The mighty Maracanã Stadium - once the largest in the world - in the shadow of Christ the Redeemer where the opening and closing cereminies will take place Credit: EPA
The Catastrophists could have their own flag in the opening ceremony. They could march around the Olympic Stadium shouting: the end is nigh. But first they need to answer a question. Why did it require their actual presence in Rio for them to care so much about sewage, corruption and mosquito-borne viruses?
Here at South America’s first Games, we are at that familiar point in a build-up when finding fault becomes a gold medal activity. And there is much fault to be found, in matters of life and health, which needs to be reported. But some of the scrutiny of Rio’s socio-economic condition is also deeply contrived. It suggests a level of concern that was simply not there before the rest of the world placed itself at risk of Zika, muggings and stomach upsets.
Why the sudden empathy/fear? Because Rio’s function is to give the world the Games it demands: a flawless carnival of sumptuous backdrops and infectious local enjoyment. Never mind sanitation, give us samba.
Health workers in the Sambadrome spray insecticide to combat the spread of the Zika virus in Rio de Janeiro
Anyone who has spent any serious time in Brazil knows it is not a place of constant dancing and sensuality: an image rooted in the football of the 1970s.
The world’s vast Olympic conceit is that a host city should transform itself into a perfect Hollywood set of nice hotels, Olympic bus lanes and zero crime. According to this logic, winning an Olympic bid confers on a city a duty to prostrate itself for the benefit of people who visit for 20 days or so and then fly away again without looking back.
This arrogance is now built into the Olympic and World Cup cultures, and it causes terrible damage. It forces the hosts into needless extravagance and leaves white elephants. It tells the local population that their sacred duty is to give every tourist a good time. Not just a good time, but a time free from any kind of hassle. In Olympia, you see, political and social reality must be suppressed until the International Olympic Committee’s spaceship lifts off and finds another city to land on.
Thomas Bach addresses the audience at the 29th IOC sitting Credit: Getty Images
Maybe it was a month spent covering the World Cup in 2014 that encouraged this awareness of how blithely we expect countries to drop everything for our benefit.
Then, football’s premiere tournament was dispersed across Brazil, with tales of construction budgets being ransacked by elites. In Rio the Maracanã was the sole focus. Now, the city has undergone a colossal $12 billion change to accommodate a much bigger spectacle that invades every centimetre of civic life.
As Brazil’s political establishment rocks and reels through a corruption crisis, the image of troops lining the main road in from the airport evokes the military dictatorships of the not-too-distant past. According to Amnesty International, there was a 103 per cent increase in police killings in Rio between April and June, with one Carioca (Rio citizen) killed every day. Since Rio won the Olympic bid in 2009, police have killed 2,600 people in their own city. Amnesty’s Brazil director, Atila Roque, says: “A shadow of death has set over Rio de Janeiro and it seems the authorities only care about how pretty the Olympic Park looks.”
Soldiers stand guard outside the Olympic Athletes Village Credit: Getty Images
Any reassurance to be felt about the huge military presence (85,000) comes with the knowledge that the soldiers and police are there to protect foreigners and intimidate the residents. It was the same story at the World Cup. This is a metropolis where one in seven live in favelas and the state governor recently declared a “state of public calamity”.
Against that backdrop, Rio is remarkably well prepared, even if some problems persist (how could they not, when a developing country is landed with the Games?). Many of the venues sparkle in the sun and the mountains and coastline add a stunning natural drama to the show that is about to unfold.
At the same time you fly down a special Olympic lane in an official bus, stare at the steaming lines of local traffic and think: what must they make of us, with our incessant demands and jumbo cans of mosquito spray?
The Faustian bargain Cariocas are meant to sign up to is that the Olympics are an infrastructure opportunity from the gods. When the rest of us leave, Rio will be left with better road and rail, a raised sensed of its place in the world.
London 2012 peddled this line too. The idea there was to “rebalance” Britain’s capital, bringing the east level with the west. “We want to help make a better future,” Thomas Bach, the IOC president, told Rio, slipping into the kind of Messianic ‘legacy’ language that was meant to be discredited.
You take a few chances coming to Rio. Even Rivaldo, a former World Player of the Year, warned earlier this year: “I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio to stay home.”
But those risks are trivial compared to the indignities suffered every day by the locals, who have no laminated passes and no army to protect them.
The Rio Games have even been labelled ‘The Apocalympics’ by online hooligans in far-off places. The anxiety runs so free that so-called medical experts are telling visitors to the beaches and lakes: “Don’t put your head under water.” If you need an expert to tell you that, you should probably be at infants school, not at the Olympics.
The Games of the XXXI Olympiad start on Thursday
Rio Olympics 2016: The world's unrealistic demands of the Games are hurting the Brazilian people
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