Rio Games built on weak foundations
Dirty water, broken ramps and £2.5bn over budget
JORGE Guinle was known as the ‘last tycoon playboy’ and he got both his final wishes. The first was to die drinking champagne and eating lobster overlooking the swimming pool of the family hotel, the grandest and most famous in Rio de Janeiro, the whitewalled Copacabana palace.
The second was to blow the entire Guinle fortune as testament to a life lived to the full. He managed the feat after seducing a string of dazzling Hollywood beauties that numbered Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth.
Here this week at the same hotel, on the terrace of that very pool, the gorgeous people of Rio partied in the zephyr that blew off the beach. Rio at that moment looked the very picture of Cidade Maravilhosa — the Marvellous City.
But, as we all know, that is only half the story on the eve of the Rio Olympics, the first to be staged in South America. Even before we get to the sport, let us briefly record the wider context into which this absurdly expensive quadrennial jamboree has been thrust.
Dilma Rousseff, the president, is facing an impeachment trial, the economy is locked in its longest recession since the Thirties, the government is mired in corruption and unemployment is rising by close to 20 per cent a year.
Even at the Copacabana palace, over the lunchtime caipirinhas, they could hear the whistles and samba of the political protest taking place on the nearby promenade.
As for the Games, which start on Friday, the national malfunction has naturally had a bruising impact. I visited Marina da Gloria, where the main sailing ramp has just collapsed. perhaps the quote of the pre-Games silly season came from the IOC spokesman who said: ‘It would be wrong to make a great deal of it. Things happen.’
The water down at the marina shimmered bluish green in the sun. It will look sumptuous on your television. ‘When I put my hand in the water a year ago it would be sticky afterwards,’ said Canadian sailing coach Erik Stibbe. ‘Not now. They have stopped the worst of the he pollution.’
It certainly looks as if they have blocked a few sewage outlets, but what they have not done is honoured a com- mitment to cleanlean up the mess once and for all. A survey by the Associated press has revealed the toxic waterways, including Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, are filthy, endangering the health of 1,400 competitors as well as up to 500,000 visitors.
‘Raw human sewage teeming with dangerous viruses and bacteria’ are still there, according to the survey. Anyone for open-water swimming? These concerns do not accord with the claim made by former IOC president Jacques Rogge when he awarded Rio the Games with the commendation that it was a bid that had ‘absolutely no flaw’. At that point the cost of playing host was estimated by organisers to be £6.5billion. The true figure is more likely north of £9bn, a 35 percent discrepancy. That will surely make any ambitious mayors with aspirations on signing the cheques for thet privilege of staging a Games think hard about doing so. Only Los Angeles in 1984 was ingenious enough to turn a profit right across the board. Up in the favelas, the heaving shanty towns that stand cheek by jowl with the richer flats, what can they possibly make of all this expense? I went to Cantagalo, close to Copacabana and Ipanema. Amid the smiling faces, the armed police standing in a group of five, a little girl blowing bubbles, the stray dogs and cats, the occasional stench of detritus, drinks stalls and even a bank, and two young men I was told were ‘soldiers of the drugs dealers’, sport was taking place in a couple of gyms.
Up the narrow labyrinth was a sign that translates as: ‘Welcome to the Academy of Noble Arts’, a social project run by a 61-year-old called Claudio da Silva Coelho. ‘I was born here,’ he said. ‘I have established this gym to stop murder and drug dealing. To give kids a purpose in life.’
On the walls, among many pictures, is one of a visit by ‘ Iron’ Mike Tyson. prince Charles has also been taken to the area. But forget the occasional visitors, what can the Olympics do for the boys of Rio’s slums?
Coelho’s answer is animated. ‘After the Olympics, the rich people will probably use the venues,’ he said. ‘But the poor people need to use them, too. I fear this will not happen. Brazil, with its politics, is not good at this kind of work.’
But was anyone listening at the Copacabana palace?