PARALYMPICS PAY PRICE IN BLACK EYE FOR RIO
Games face major budget cuts as Olympics organizers run short of cash
Careening along like one of those nearly but never quite out-ofcontrol cliffside buses headed from Copacabana for the Olympic Park, the Rio Olympic Games nearly made it to the finish line without any really serious harm done.
But there is no laughing off all the slapdash preparations and equally half-measure fixes any more.
Rio 2016’s cost of putting out fires on a daily basis — throwing money the organizing committee didn’t have at problems it failed to plan for — finally has a victim: the Paralympic Games.
Lack of cash flow is going to result in a much less grand Paralympics, scheduled to begin Sept. 7, and potentially a huge step backward for the movement.
“Never before in the 56-year history of the Paralympic Games have we faced circumstances like this,” International Paralympic Committee president Sir Philip Craven said in a statement.
Major budget cuts will mean the workforce for the Paralympics will be downsized, transport for athletes and their teams will be cut back, the Deodoro Olympic Park will be closed and dismantled, venue media centres will be closed — in short, as lacking as the Olympics were in the big-time “look of the Games,” the Paralympics will be more spartan still.
“It’s in our Paralympic DNA to see obstacles as an opportunity to do things differently and that’s what we are doing here,” said Craven, voicing the IPC’s intention to press ahead with whatever can be salvaged. “We are problem solvers by nature and fight for what we believe in. The opportunity we have here to make Rio, Brazil, Latin America and the world a more equitable place for all does not come around very often, so we have to grab it with both hands.
“We are working desperately hard to protect athlete services, especially within the field of play. They have dedicated their lives to reaching these Games and we will do our utmost to try and maintain the service levels and scope that they expect at a Paralympic Games.” It won’t be easy. The Olympics themselves have experienced shortages of food and water at venues and an exodus of volunteers, complaining of being underpaid and underfed, resulting in even vital areas like doping control being short-staffed.
Poor attendance at many Olympic events has been an ongoing story, but only 12 per cent of Paralympic tickets have been sold and competing nations haven’t received their first instalments of support grants from Rio 2016. Craven said “around 10 countries” will have difficulty covering the costs of travel to the Games.
Until Friday’s bombshell announcement, the worst of the Rio Olympics’ shortcomings could be written off as annoying, inconvenient or even humorous, but not truly damaging.
Rocks thrown through the windows of a media bus. A stray bullet likely fired at a blimp falling through the roof of the media centre at equestrian. A pontoon from the marathon swim blowing away in the night. Buses that never came. Green water.
Even the shaggy-dog story of American swimmer Ryan Lochte and his teammates claiming to have been robbed at gunpoint by bandits disguised as police — an incident that enraged Brazilians when it turned out to have been an invention — was at heart a case of vandalism and stupid, drunken entitlement.
A door was broken, a wall urinated upon, Lochte’s teammate Jimmy Feigen paid a US$11,000 “donation to charity” to get to leave Brazil, and life goes on.
But now, not without Rio 2016 suffering a black eye. This was the one ball the organizing committee could not afford to drop without a load of bad publicity, though the committee’s spokesman Mario Andrada did his best to skate past the negatives Friday, as always.
When the main topic of conversation was Lochte and his very belated apology, Andrada said the Rio 2016 Twitter site had received 1.8 million people complaining about the incident, which accounted for 2.5 per cent of all mentions on the site since the beginning of the Games. He said the false allegations had “humiliated” Brazilians, but he accepted Lochte’s apology and said Brazilians would, too, and move on.
“And I don’t see this as being a factor that will mar these Games. As a matter of fact, I don’t think history cares much (about) any negative fact that takes place during an Olympic Games,” Andrada said. “What goes to history is the huge contribution by the athletes and also the artists when you think about the opening and closing ceremonies.
“So I think history will take from these Games the medals of Mr. (Michael) Phelps, we’ll take the passion of the fans, we’ll take the huge, huge performance from Mr. (Usain) Bolt, and we’ll take the memory of the extreme ambience and energy that we got at most of the competitions.”
Maybe in Brazil, that’s how they teach history. In the wheelchairaccessible world, Rio 2016 is always going to have an asterisk.