GEARING UP FOR LIFE MOMENTS
Rio de Janeiro readies for the Games
Sergey Bubka, the world-beating pole vaulter, knows something about the Olympics, having competed in four of them.
The genial 51-year-old president of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee — who grew up in a part of his war-ravaged country now occupied by pro-Russian forces — reckons that the 2016 Rio Olympics will be the best ever for the most wonderful of reasons. Brazilians and foreigners alike will have a lot of fun.
“I am confident it will be a fantastic Games with lots of emotion and unforgettable moments,” Bubka said after spending time mentoring a group of young Brazilian athletes on a track that had Sugarloaf Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean as a spectacular backdrop. “They will deliver and there will be a unique atmosphere because Brazil and sport are very special.”
Bubka’s opinion matters because he sits on the International Olympic Committee’s Co-ordination Commission, which has just concluded one of its regular inspections of the Rio venues to ensure the city will be ready for the opening ceremony on Aug. 5, 2016.
But anyone who has spent time in Rio, especially during the pleasure-fest that is Carnival, would reach the same conclusion that Bubka did. The Brazilians have an infectious enthusiasm for partying. Combine that with the national obsession with soccer, the Cariocas’ exalted beach culture and the magnificent climate, even during what will be the heart of the southern winter, and you have a winning combination.
Agberto Guimarães, the sports director for the Rio Games, said that what would make the next Olympics special was that “Brazilians are just crazy about sports. I can tell you, the atmosphere inside the venues will be like no other place.”
That should provide the cleansing tonic that the Olympics needs after a technically proficient but soulless 2014 Winter Games in Sochi that were a somewhat grotesque, literally mountain-moving $50-billion US vanity project designed to enhance the domestic and global reputation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
To be sure, the XXXI Olympiad has difficulties that are familiar to every Games. Parts of the sprawling city are a total mess, as swarms of construction workers rush to finish major projects that are behind schedule.
There has also been the usual pre-Games distress over the treatment of the poor — several thousand have been evicted from their homes to make way for the roads that will deliver crowds to the competitions — with a special twist because this country is still caught between the First World and the Third World.
Among Rio’s potential problems and shortcomings, perhaps the most serious have been concerns over whether some of the city’s ambitious public transport grid upgrades and a couple of the Olympic venues will be ready on time.
But as the IOC observed last week, it is not nearly as doubtful as about Rio’s tight construction timetable as it was one year ago.
And though Rio has far more poor people and far more violent crime than any other city that has hosted the biggest, most expensive show on Earth, Rio organizers correctly point out that despite fears of trouble before soccer’s 2014 World Cup, that tournament went off without a hitch. (Except for Brazil’s stunning 7-1 loss to Germany in the semifinal.)
Two other issues could tarnish South America’s first Olympics.
A swank new Olympic golf course being built in a protected nature preserve looks very much like it is simply a pretext to provide Brazil’s super rich and the jet-setting international elite with fabulous, heavily guarded homes that will have breathtaking views of a gorgeous park and beach.
And then there is the appalling quality of the water in Guanabara Bay. Olympic sailors competing there will definitely not want to capsize, as the bay is awash with prodigious amounts of largely untreated human waste produced by eight million Cariocas. Spectators crowding the shoreline to watch the Olympic regatta are not likely to be spared, either, because a prevailing onshore breeze will carry the stench of foul air over them.
On the other hand, the city, which is notorious for its traffic jams, should have less air pollution after the Olympics. This is because the Games have provided the impetus for an almost totally new transport grid that looks set to hit its goal of increasing the use of public transport from 20 per cent to 60 per cent.
In fact, municipal officials are categorical that these improvements alone have been worth the Games’ steep $13.5-billion price tag, not only because of the environmental benefits that will be triggered by better public transport, but because the new high-speed routes will be a special boon to the city’s poor, who now face diabolical commute times in crushing conditions.
The transformative effect that the Rio Olympics will have on the lives of Brazil’s athletes and everyone who lives in the host city has captivated Bubka. Recalling his own rise from a difficult life in what was the Soviet eastern Ukraine during an uplifting pep talk to young Brazilian sportsmen, he told them that “sport is a unique power” and that their Olympics could offer them and their countrymen the way to a better, more interesting life.
“I grew up in a simple family without any advantages,” Bubka said, recalling how in his youth he and his friends played a cat-andmouse game with guards in order to be able to sneak in and train at a closed Red Army base. “But I enjoyed and love sport, and sport opened the doors to the world for me. It showed that there are no differences between us.”