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THE DOPING SCANDAL THE OUTSIDERS PLANES AND MEALS BUMPY ROAD

Expect a sensational battle between SA’s Chad le Clos (24) and American legend Michael Phelps (31), Laubscher says. Four years ago Le Clos snatched gold in the 200 m butterfly from Phelps and finished just behind him in the 100m. Since then Le Clos has been beaten only once in the 200 m and not at all in the 100 m.

Phelps has won more Olympic medals than any other athlete. If he wins gold at this, his fifth Olympics, it will be his 19th gold medal. American gymnast Simone Biles (19) has been all-round world champion for three consecutive years and is a four-time allround American champion. Expect magic – and gravity-defying flic-flacs. The International Olympics Committee (IOC) controversially stopped short of banning the entire Russian team from the Games, leaving it up to individual sporting codes to decide whether to allow Russian athletes to take part.

This follows a World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report that found the Russian government sponsored a widespread doping programme between 2011 and 2015. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) banned Russian track and field athletes from the Olympics, and the ban was upheld by the CAS.

Just weeks before the start of the Games the IOC ruled against a blanket ban, a decision slammed by former Wada president Dick Pound, who said For the first time a refugee team – comprising athletes who fled to Europe from their war-torn countries – has been assembled to take part in the Olympics.

“They can’t represent any of the European countries because they don’t have citizenship. In their homelands they’re regarded as traitors. They’re basically stateless,” Laubscher says. “They’ll compete under the Olympic flag. The concept of the Games is that it should be open to everyone.”

The team hasn’t been announced yet nor have the finer details of the conditions for membership. Controversy broke out recently when it emerged SA athletes had to get to Rio under their own steam. But it isn’t quite as blunt as that: the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) hired an aircraft to take the athletes from SA to Rio, and all athletes in the country flew for free.

South African athletes elsewhere in the world were expected to get to Rio by themselves but Sascoc has undertaken to pay R12 000 towards their ticket.

In Rio the athletes stay in the Olympic Village, where everyone is served the same meals from an on-site kitchen. Athletes on a special diet are required to buy their own food. Two weeks before the Games some stadiums and roads were still incomplete. Caster Semenya Sunette Viljoen