Host city rises above the skepticism
RIO DE JANEIRO — There’s a traditional Olympic sport called massive piling on.
And the media ran away with the gold medal before these Games even started.
The Rio Olympics were going to be a complete disaster. We were all going to contract the Zika virus. The pollution was going to make the athletes violently ill. Every visitor was going to be robbed by gun-toting criminals. None of us would be safe from terrorist attacks because of the incompetent Brazilian organizers.
The mass hysteria reached record-breaking levels. And yet. The Rio Olympics are almost at a close. And like every Olympics that brings together masses from around the world — athletes, fans, media, bureaucrats, corporate sponsors — it has been bumpy at times. But mostly beautiful. There’s a Zika scare, all right. But it’s in Miami-Dade County, where authorities are warning pregnant women not to visit. Here in Rio, it’s winter, and few of us have even seen a mosquito.
There is plenty of pollution still here, but the triathletes and sailors wept not from illness but from the joy of competing.
Atlanta the nadir
And gun-toting criminals? While they’re around, just like in the United States, and the poor people of Rio live daily with crime, the biggest criminal scare was a fabricated story by a 32-year-old American swimmer who is a four-time Olympian. And now a forever national embarrassment.
Worst Olympics ever? That was what the critics were predicting for Rio.
Turns out that competition is not even close. The title of Worst Olympics in the modern mega-Games era (post-dating the massacre at Munich) still belongs to Atlanta.
Yes, those were the last Summer Olympics hosted by the globe’s wealthy superpower. Atlanta was where the transportation and information systems broke down and the ambience was that of a lowlife carnival. And it remains the only Olympics where a bomb was detonated in a crowded downtown park, killing a visitor.
With the caveat that the Closing Ceremony still remains to be held Sunday night, Rio has not been even close to the disaster Atlanta was.
It has been a scaled-down Olympics, with plenty of barely finished, rough-around-the-edges structures and functions. But it has been a success. The good with the bad
As with every Olympics, the pre-Games concern quickly dissipates to the fun of getting to know a new city and its citizens. Worry relaxes into daily routine.
What has worked in Rio? A lot. The buses for the most part have run on time. The Wi-Fi and cellphone service virtually everywhere — including on those buses – has functioned well. The information system has run smoothly. While there are reports that masses of volunteers quit, the ones here have been helpful and flexible and learned to adjust on the fly. The beer is very cold.
What hasn’t worked so well: The setup of the Games has been difficult to navigate. Soccer, volleyball and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies have been at Maracana Stadium. Track and field have been conducted at the Olympic Stadium. Neither one is inside the Olympic Park. And the most beautiful events have been an hour away at Copacabana, which is the heart of Rio de Janeiro.
There hasn’t been enough food, and the complex system of purchasing anything creates long lines.
But those are logistical nitpicks. The answer to the bigger questions — Would we be safe? Will the Games be a success? — is yes.
Before almost every Olympics, there is panic. It happened before Athens, before Beijing, before London. But it was worse before these Games. That’s understandable because of the political and economic woes in Brazil, which is suffering its worst recession in history and whose government is in the midst of a corruption scandal.
But there was also something demeaning and patronizing behind the pre-Olympics hysteria, as though the first South American country to host the Games could not possibly pull this off. Olympic spirit alive and well
Yet the Rio Olympics have taught us all valuable lessons. From the Opening Ceremony, when Rio proved you could celebrate the Olympics and your nation for a fraction of the cost others have spent, to the joyful music that pervades the streets to the pride of the Brazilians for their athletes, these Games have embodied the spirit of the Olympics. Despite the odds stacked against Rio.
Unfortunately, that won’t be the only Olympic legacy. The legacy also will be the broken promises of an improved sanitation system, of a new subway system that only benefits the city’s wealthiest, of billions of dollars spent on something other than improving education and health care or raising the destitute out of poverty.
The Olympics have stressed an already stressed system. The city of Rio and the nation of Brazil have far bigger problems than trying to host the world for two weeks.
As almost everyone agrees, awarding the Olympics to Rio probably wasn’t a great idea.
Despite that, Rio embraced the two-week party. And has given us a memorable and successful Olympics.