Rio disaster or smooth sailing?

Olympics tend to get to the finish, whether lurching or soaring

When Rio was awarded the Olympic Games, it was a typically festive moment. Brazil had defeated Chicago and Madrid with relative ease; it was 2009, and their economy was booming. The Olympics were going to South America for the first time.

“There was absolutely no flaw in the bid,” said then-IOC president Jacques Rogge.

Well, about that. Every Olympics has its terrors and absurdities before it begins, yes, we all know that.

Athens wasn’t going to be ready, Turin had construction delays and security worries, Beijing had air you could chew and human-rights debacles, Vancouver didn’t have enough snow and nobody cared, London had a subway bombing in its recent past and had to call in the army to work the metal detectors, and Sochi was beset by black-widow suicide bombers.

This is, in every way, at best a partial list. It has always been thus.

(Note: This is not the last list in this column. Sorry, but like fact-checking Donald Trump until you decide you’d rather live in a cabin in the mountains of Nepal, it’s largely unavoidable.)

But Rio’s list is so long that it’s changed three or four times, like the weather. As the world descended, it was expected to change again. Early on, construction was behind schedule, bordering on an emergency. The Zika virus would bring, or at least hasten, a global pandemic. The open-water events would take place in what sounded like biohazard soup. Then the Brazilian economy collapsed and the endemic corruption in Brazilian politics helped push a legislative coup that toppled the government. The cops weren’t getting paid, the streets wouldn’t be safe, the subway might not get done.

Wait, there was more. They killed a mascot jaguar. Two cyclists were killed when a wave wiped out part of an Olympic bike path. There was super bacteria in the water, and a human arm, and a human body. An Australian Paralympian, two Spanish sailors and their coach, and a New Zealand jiujitsu fighter were all either mugged or, in the last case, kidnapped. The last one, the kidnappers were policemen. Were they the policemen who displayed that infamous sign at the airport that read WELCOME TO HELL? If not, they may have proved the point.

There was the reported reluctance to move into the Olympic Village due to problems with plumbing and electricity, unlit stairwells and common areas, the smell of gas — and, as the Argentines alleged, concrete in the pipes. The Olympic Village is usually the thing that doesn’t have construction issues, Sochi’s cardboard doors notwithstanding.

That series of mishaps and worries, by the way, was also a partial list. Newspapers have word limits.

Every piece of news — save the Zika infection rates in Rio, which have dropped as winter arrived — pointed to an Olympics in a less stable context than any since Mexico City in 1968, which took place in the wake of the bloody Mexican student protests. The budget cuts that impacted security; the levels of street crime and violence in the city, which were far higher than in any Olympic city in modern history; the sense that Brazil, as its government was in tumult and its economy crashed, may not be in control.

That’s what the Olympics is, logistically: it is the ability to make the buses run on time to the right places, and make everything work. (If nobody at the 1996 Games on one of the hostage-situation buses referred to it as the lost city of Atlanta, that’s an opportunity lost.)

Olympics tend to get to the finish, whether lurching or stumbling, striding or soaring. The problems beforehand are inevitable because an Olympics is one of the most complex events a city or country can attempt, other than perhaps national elections. Whenever somebody talks of moving the Olympics after it’s been awarded, as they did with Rio, it’s almost always wishful thinking. The Olympics are a logistical fission bomb, and the seven-year lead time is often barely enough.

Yes, before an Olympics, everyone turns into Chicken Little. But some of the problems actually come to pass. Athens wasn’t REALLY ready. Beijing’s air was opaque until the last week or so, and the human rights issues were about as advertised. Vancouver had mild problems with the snow, and a fatal one with the sliding track. London went swimmingly, and Sochi’s security warnings turned out to be exagger- ated, in part because Russia paid and issued passports to up to 2,500 Islamic radicals in mid-2013, and sent them to Syria, according to Reuters. Sochi had enough problems — human rights, the accommodation issues — without that.

But Olympics lurch, or stumble, or stride, or soar.

So now it’s Rio’s turn. There will be fun. There will be eye-popping visuals of the people of Brazil, of the vistas of Brazil, of whoever at the IOC ordered 450,000 condoms for the athletes. It will look spectacular, even if you can’t go in the water at the beach. Rio is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and with the right camera angles, you can make anything look good.

Maybe it’ll work. Maybe they’ll cram enough soldiers and cops on the streets — it’s what Atlanta did — and the traffic will glide, and the water won’t be poison. Maybe everyone will chill out, and have fun. It’s Rio’s turn for the Olympics. Let’s see how it goes.