Wretched Rio buildup so far

This was real danger, real menace, and sends a chilling message.

- the IOC has abrogated its core responsibility and has sheeted decisions back to individual sports federations for whom it will be far harder to make the tough decisions.

Against that background, there’s a dreary familiarity to the complaints about unfinished accommodation for athletes, with dodgy plumbing and, perhaps more seriously, electrical wiring causing consternation for our Australian friends in particular. But even at this late stage, the expectation must be that the worst of it will be sorted.

Whereas, Rio has earned a particular sort of infamy, in New Zealand anyway, through the kidnap of one of our athletes. Jason Lee is not an Olympian, it’s true, but is our jiujitsu national champion and has lived in Rio for about a year.

He has just told of being kidnapped by armed men in police uniforms - it does appear they were real police taken to ATM machines and forced to withdraw NZ$850 to pay them.

This was real danger, real menace, and sends a chilling message. Perhaps not so much to Olympians themselves, as to Olympic tourists.

Any country that makes the incredibly demanding, and risky, decision to host such an event does so with ardent hopes that it will emerge with a substantial and longstanding boost to its tourism fortunes.

But Lee himself makes the point that what happened to him is a stark reminder of a very real risk that’s part of daily life for many in Brazil.

It is simultaneously a terrible message from Brazil’s point of view, a timely one from ours, and a valid one from any perspective you care to take.

Before long, it’s likely that a sense of anticipation and excitement will kick in. But when you add this little lot to the delights of the Zika virus, the diffidence of leading men’s golfers to the sport’s reinstatement as an Olympic event, and the generic modern concern that any such highprofile meeting may be a terrorism magnet, Rio’s buildup has been dismal.