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Are The Rio Olympics A Looming Disaster?
Topic Started: Jul 3 2016, 09:09 AM (40 Views)
Webster
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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Toronto Globe & Mail: Rio's a disaster, but as long as it looks good on TV, who cares?

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(Globe & Mail) Garbage is pictured on Fundao Island, the entrance of the bay where the Rio 2016 sailing competitions will take place.
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The arrivals lounge at Rio de Janeiro’s Galeao International Airport is not an inviting place. Cramped, loud, hard up on the street. At the best of times, it has a bad, bazaar feel that is unwelcoming to newcomers staggering into daylight after 10 hours in coach.

That’s the where the restive local cops and other first responders decided to erect their banner this week. It read (in English): “Welcome to Hell … Whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe.”

How fun! Maybe they can arrange for someone from the Tourism Bureau to greet you with a good, hard slap while you’re waiting in the taxi rank. Just to soften you up for the muggers.

We’re just over a month out from the start of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Traditionally, this is the point at which the tide of bad news that greets any major sporting event begins to turn. It’s where good manners begin to trump good sense.

Everything’s just about finished. The first visitors are starting to show up. The end-stage of the Olympic dream – awakening – has begun. Whatever you thought this would be when you agreed to do it a decade earlier has given way to what it actually is – a cross to bear.

The runup to Rio 2016 has a similar feel to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. General unrest was thick on the ground in the days before kickoff. Disruptions throughout the tournament were promised.

Everyone you met back home knew a guy who had a cousin from Fortaleza who was once robbed at gunpoint – so that was obviously going to happen to you, too. We met a nice local official who told us that if we used our ATM cards even once, they would be cloned and our accounts drained. Not “might be.” “Would be.” Every one of us had already used our ATM cards in Rio.

On the morning of the opening match, there was a protest outside the stadium in Sao Paulo. While monitors broadcast video of riot police cracking heads a few hundred meters away, we sat in a press room listening to FIFA officials drone on about their new initiative: “The Handshake of Peace.”

When asked about the dissonance, an official said: “What might be behind [the police action], whether it’s true or not, just support this. This is more than just about FIFA. This is more than just about football.”

Yes, it was more than football. It’s also about money. And it’s about manners.

It would have been bad manners to keep moaning about poverty and oppression once the party had started. Plus, it bores readers. All of us entered a state of dumb, agreeable compliance. The protests were a footnote that day and were, to my memory, never discussed again.
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Webster
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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...continued from previous post....
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Brazilians were figuring out that no one cared about what was being done to their country to facilitate a football tournament. Local outrage was decent tabloid fodder in the absence of anything better to talk about (doomsaying ranks just below triumphs of the will and tragic pets in the news-cycle hierarchy). Once there was a game to focus on, everyone stopped pretending to give a damn.

The World Cup came off without incident. It wasn’t an inspired event, on the field or off. But I suppose you can’t expect too much for $19-billion these days.

Once we left, things apparently got much worse for the average Brazilian. Freed to talk among themselves, the complaining began again.

This is the peak of the catastrophism. If you scanned the headlines to create a Hollywood pitch line for Rio right now, it’d be “Children of Men” meets “The Beach” (with a small taste of “The Human Centipede”).

Nothing will work. Some of us will die. None of those who go will ever again have children.

Here’s soccer legend Rivaldo’s note of welcome: “I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio – to stay home. You’ll be putting your life at risk here.”

This hyperbolic nonsense is an understandable effect of political delirium. It creates an expectation of chaos that – short of civil war – won’t materialize. And so people lose interest in it almost immediately.

Instead, the public loves the absurd details and small screw-ups. The “How many toilets can you put in one bathroom stall?” stories. In Sochi, they became their own sub-genre. But they aren’t invested in the big ideas. Why would they be? They aren’t Brazilians. They’ve got their own problems.

The locals are all out banging their metaphoric pots at the moment, but that will stop as soon as the Opening Ceremonies begin. This is where decorum takes over. It’s one thing to make fun of yourselves. It’s less amusing to see yourself become a figure of ridicule in the global community. The on-the-ground theme of the first three days of any Olympics is “How are we going over?” All that’s required to snap Rio residents back into line is an index of the world’s mocking headlines.

As such, it isn’t money that keeps the Olympics afloat. It’s societal pressure to show well to the world. And also money.

No matter how shoddy the facilities are, most athletes won’t complain about them because most athletes don’t complain. They know it only makes them sound like sore losers.

The violence is never as advertised because it’s easy to stop in the short term. You flood the streets with troops and enlist local gangs in your marketing campaign. Just because they’re criminals, doesn’t mean they aren’t patriots as well.

Zika is a mosquito-borne flu and nothing more. It’s winter in Rio. Nobody’s going to get it and, by week two, no one will remember why they were so worried.

Will everything work? Probably not. That was the obvious sub-text of the recent announcement that organizers have run out of money – “Don’t expect much.” I have visions of hitchhiking to the modern pentathlon.

But that’s all behind the scenes. On TV, it’ll look great. Which is all that matters.

Despite bankruptcy, calamity, national states of emergency, plague, violence and the filthy water, I am fully confident that Rio 2016 will be a wonderful success when viewed from the only perspective that matters – your couch.
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