As we put the month of August in our rear view mirror, we also leave behind a truly historic month. The dominance on display in Rio De Janeiro at this past year’s Summer Olympics from Team USA has been one that we as a country can take comfort in seeing for the world of athletics to witness. With one hundred and twenty-one total medals (3rd highest in our country’s history at any Summer Olympics’) and all the hype during the Games, there was never a chance to consider what else goes on in a host city especially one that may not have ever been fit to host. At the time of publication, the Olympics’ have been almost a month removed and it is now time for all those watching around the world to return to normalcy.
Like many host countries’ past, Brazil was under tremendous international pressure to prove to not only the International Olympic Committee (IOC) but to the rest of the world that it was fully capable of giving itself a face lift (Brazilian face lift…there’s a bad joke in there somewhere). Unlike any other host country however, Brazil became the first South American country to host the Summer Games. Rio De Janeiro quickly became the most watched and studied city in the years following its Olympic bid win.
The obvious red flags that arouse surrounding Rio De Janeiro’s bid were its lack of infrastructure to support new Olympic facilities or the impending boom of tourism, the dangers of local crime that infested nearby favelas, toxic sewage being funneled in to Guanabara Bay and the amount of funding needed to create the IOC’s vision of a mega event. With time no longer on their side, Rio’s biggest concerns were slowly becoming the world’s concerns as representatives from every corner of the earth would eventually all be subsequent judges for Rio De Janeiro for two weeks in August.
In an attempt to erase the negative stigma that most of the world had about Brazil and its capital city, certain “steps” were taken to create the IOC’s latest spectacle. Favelas are as common place in Rio as tourist are, the possibility of crime spilling over in to the view of the rest of the world could not be allowed. Special task forces were created and sent in to the favelas in an aggressive and violent attempt to try to put a lid on the crime rate booming within the impoverished shanty towns. These aggressive approaches led to a spike in innocent civilians being killed by police. Lack of infrastructure opportunity in the city of Rio De Janeiro forced planners to host the events in all newly built facilities and stadiums outside the city. The space for the new facilities were only made possible after over 77,000 people were forcefully evicted from their homes to make room over a five-year span from 2009-2015.
The people of Rio De Janeiro very well may not ever profit from the revenue from the Olympics that would promise to be the answer to the country’s financial struggles. Past host cities such as Montreal (1976) and Athens (2004) left both their respective countries in a large financial hole. After hosting the Winter Games in 2014, Sochi is still maintaining facilities that were built for the Olympics’ and will have had no other use since the end of the Winter Games. This may well be the road taken by Rio De Janeiro as they are expected to rent out the Olympic village suites as luxury condos as part of the village’s transformation in to a luxury resort that will sure to attract only those able to afford it. The only possible way that the city can gain financial bearing after what it gave up for the IOC.
Brazil’s Olympic bid became almost solidified after hosting the 2007 Pan Am Games which required funding from public funds such as the Federal Worker’s Fund to build its newest facilities. Many of those facilities go unused to this day and require additional funding to maintain structural integrity due to these facilities having been built on unsuitable wetlands.
Unfortunately, many Olympic facilities were also built on similar unsuitable lands. On top of facility costs major improvements to public transportation, airports, docks, and tourist housing all were required to accommodate the massive influx of tourist traffic during the month of August. Only 40% of funding for the Rio’s face lift came from government (Federal, state, and local) and top sponsors such as Pepsi and McDonald’s. The other 60% came from tax payers. At no point it seems did government officials ever fathom that tax payers would not notice how much was sacrificed at their expense to showboat to the rest of the world for simply two weeks.
With Brazil having a population almost entirely dedicated to the world’s most popular and affordable international sport in futbol, is there hope to see any local kids from the favelas making it on to any of those grand fields or courts to play some tennis or maybe go skeet shooting? We all know who can and cannot afford to even set foot on the soon to be luxury resort. More or less it is a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands who live a few miles from what they aren’t allowed to touch.
Underdog Off The Bench 