What the commentators said
When Rio was picked, in 2009, to host South America’s first Games, it seemed “a great bet”, said Sonia Sodha in The Observer. But with once-booming Brazil now in a deep recession, the picture looks different. The country is spending almost $10bn on hosting this event, on top of the $15bn it spent on the World Cup two years ago. “Is this really $25bn well spent?” No, it’s not, said Michael Royster in The Rio Times. Rio’s new metro system has made the centre of the city an “airier and lighter place”. But other promised improvements – making the crime-ridden favelas safer, cleaning up Guanabara Bay – haven’t materialised. “No one in Rio is excited about a ‘legacy’ public golf course, because almost no one in Rio can afford to play golf.”
Once most Games begin, such gripes tend to be forgotten, said Marina Hyde in The Guardian. The excitement of the competition eradicates all the months of “overspending, martial displays, human rights abuses, neighbourhood cleansing, and all the other adorable fascist quirks” that accompany any modern sporting mega-event. But will that hold true this time, given all the bad feeling about doping?
It will for me, said Simon Barnes in The Spectator. Of course the IOC is “prone to expediency rather than idealism”. But you still have to be pretty miserable not to be stirred by the spectacle of “10,000 fabulous athletes” from around the world coming together to vie for glory. What the moaners forget is that there has never been a “pure” Olympics free from any intrigue or cheating, said Mick Hume on Spiked. Many countries before Russia have been complicit in doping. The 1904 Olympic marathon was won by the American competitor Thomas Hicks, who was “fuelled by a mixture of brandy and strychnine sulphate” (the medal almost went “to another US runner who crossed the line first, but it was decided that his tactic of hitching a lift in a passing car went a bit too far”). So enough carping. The sporting spectacle of the Games remains, as ever, “the greatest show on Earth”.