RIO DE JANEIRO:
The Rio de Janeiro 2016 summer Olympics move firmly into the spotlight this week with the International Olympic Committee in town to monitor progress and the football World Cup wrapping up.
The Olympics are the country’s second global sports event it has committed itself to staging and following the end of the world’s biggest single sports event today, Rio enters the final stretch of delivering a troubled project.
Called the “worst ever” preparations by IOC Vice President John Coates as recently as April, Rio organisers have been with their backs to the wall from the start, trying to play catchup with a schedule they had fallen behind.
IOC President Thomas Bach met Brazil President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia on Friday before returning to Rio to attend the World Cup final.
“We are seeing great progress and appreciate the commitment of the president and the government of Brazil for the Games,” Bach told reporters.
“We believe they will be very successful.”
The German lawyer took charge of the IOC after winning elections in September and has been trying to instil a sense of urgency with organisers ever since.
Brazil had to face years of criticism in the run-up to the World Cup with delays in construction and completion of stadiums forcing world soccer’s governing body FIFA to say organisers “needed a kick up the backside.”
Fears of widespread protests and major problems with security and transportation failed to materialise during the month-long tournament seen overall as successful and the IOC are hoping Olympic organisers had drawn valuable conclusions for their own 16-day event.
“The World Cup is a bit like a test event for the IOC,” an Olympic source with direct knowledge of preparations told Reuters on condition of anonymity on Friday. “To be able to learn from it and use that knowledge for the Rio Olympics.”
The source also said the IOC was “explaining, explaining, explaining,” in order to avoid a backlash from citizens over huge spending for the multi-billion dollar sports event as that directed against FIFA.
While ordinary Brazilians supported their football team, many were angry at the billions their government spent for building or refurbishing stadiums and World Cup-related infrastructure projects instead of injecting the cash into social welfare projects.
The IOC would be pumping what would amount eventually to about $1.5bn back towards local organisers through revenues generated for the event from sponsors and broadcasters, the official said.
Meanwhile, the World Cup’s success will help ease concerns over Rio de Janeiro’s preparations for the 2016 Olympics, the city’s mayor said, promising that everything will be ready on time.
Two months after a top International Olympic Committee official said the preparations were the worst he had seen, Mayor Eduardo Paes insisted that venues would be ready for use, including the highly polluted Guanabara Bay.
Delays building stadiums and social protests caused concerns about Brazil’s buildup to the World Cup, but the tournament has taken place without any major incidents.
“I think all the criticism that we faced before the World Cup helped a lot to smooth concerns about the Olympic Games,” Paes said ahead of today’s Argentina-Germany final in Rio’s Maracana Stadium.
“This mistrust that we had two months ago, we don’t face anymore,” he said in English to a group of foreign journalists.
“I’m not saying that we have an easy task ahead of us. It’s not easy to do the Olympics. We still have lots of work ahead of us, but we are confident that we will deliver things on time,” Paes said.
Agencies
