IOC vice president, John Coates of Australia has this week stated that Rio
de Janeiro is not remotely close to being ready, and other reports
indicate little sign they’ll be able to turn it around soon.
Now, being unready at this stage of the game, and even much later, is hardly unprecedented. When I went to the hugely successful Athens Olympics in 2004, I couldn’t help but notice they hadn’t even finished the Acropolis yet, and I think they’d been building it for, like, centuries. But Greece still had a First World economy, a population that was as skilled as it was educated as it was passionate to put on a great Games.
Brazil – love it as we do – has none of those things. More, there is constant and growing social unrest, as activists rightly point out how ludicrous it is to spend such vast sums of public money to build a landing pad for a huge sports spaceship that simply comes and goes after two weeks, when rather more important and enduring things such as schools, hospitals, roads and sewers remain unbuilt.
The same reckoning applies to the World Cup next month, but while the population will cop that, as they are so into that sport, there is a real chance they’ll revolt against the Olympics. In that case, are we in Sydney not the obvious ones to host? We have an entire Olympic precinct where, on many a day, tumbleweeds are blowing down the dirty boulevard.
For an absolute minimum cost, compared to the initial outlay, we could host the whole thing. As to administration, we simply put the band back together. They won’t be hard to find. The bulk of the key ones have been on the Olympics caravan since, selling their expertise to host city after city, and they could simply come home again. Where are you Sandy Holloway? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. The Olympics is our baby, and it is time it came back from Rio.
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