With all the problems facing the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the Walking Dead-like viral outbreaks, the poop-infested beaches and the basic breakdown of social services and security, you’d think it would all boil down to a money and the unwillingness to spend it. You would be right.
But that doesn’t mean Rio got off as cheaply as they wanted. A couple of researchers at Oxford University recently published a study that Rio has so far sunk a total of $4.6 billion into preparations for the Olympics. The problem with that? It was supposed to just cost $3 billion.
Brazil is facing multiple crises. And now it has a serious Olympic budget over-spend. https://t.co/neOXsv8HNp pic.twitter.com/mQpk1XLje1
— Financial Times (@FT) July 7, 2016
Which was ridiculous to begin with. The average Summer Olympic Games costs $8.9 billion to put on and every single one of them goes over budget. In 1976 the Montreal games cost 720 percent more than they budgeted for the games.
So why was the budget so low? And, in writing that, I do realize the inherent contradiction in saying $3 billion ins a low number. Because Brazil is broke and never should have applied for the Olympic Games or been awarded them to begin with. Brazil has declared a state of financial emergency a month before the games begin. It’s why these events usually are held in rich countries. They can afford to keep human turds out of the pool.
“Given the above results,” the Oxford report stated. “For a city and nation to decide to stage the Olympic Games is to decide to take on one of the most costly an financially most risky type of mega-project that exists, something that many cities and nations have learned at their peril.”
Rio tried to get off cheap and still paid the price, with piss and refuse running down its beaches, a police force on strike and a swarm of Andromeda Strain mosquitoes dive-bombing the populace. The Olympics are 26 days away.
The Rio Olympics already has a body count
The lead-up to the games has not only been a financial and public health disaster, it’s also already killed four people. Last week two skydivers collided in mid-air during an aerial routine with 26 other skydivers. The idea was to create a mock-up of the Olympic rings in the air. Instead the two men, Gustavo Correa Garcez and Bastos Padilha, ran into each other after their chutes deployed, tangling their lines. Garcez, who was the Brazil National Skydiving Champion died at the hospital. Padilha died at the scene.
Skydivers fall to their deaths in Olympic rings performance in #Brazil https://t.co/ByDx2tCb4C pic.twitter.com/dorepPUM1x
— RT (@RT_com) July 2, 2016
Back in April two people were killed on a bike path built for the Olympics when it collapsed after being hit by a giant wave. The path cost $12.5 million to build and was celebrated as one of the few successes in the lead up to the games.
And an oil spill
In case you thought the presence of human waste was as bad is it was going to get for Olympic ocean and beach-based events, I bet you feel really stupid right now. An oil spill from a leaking boat is working its way across Guanabara Bay, turning the white Olympic practice boats brown.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Camilla Cedercreutz, a sailor from Finland, told the Associated Press. “There was no way you could avoid it… This is only our second time in Rio. We’ve heard it was really bad. You get mad because it shouldn’t be like this anywhere. It shouldn’t be this dirty. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”
The good news for Olympic sailors is that the whole area is actually cleaner than it was a year ago. According to Jordi Xammar, a Spanish sailor the water was worse a year ago. “It was yellow-green last year,” Xammar said.
And then there’s the anti-gay violence
Brazil was recently named the world’s deadliest place for LBTGQ people, according to Grup Gay da Bahia, with almost 1,600 people killed in sexuality-related hate crimes over the last four and a half years.
“We live off this image as an open and tolerant place,” Jandira Queiroz, a coordinator for Amnesty International Brazil said. “Homophobic violence has hit crisis levels and it’s getting worse.”
Despite its image as a tolerant society, Brazil is, by some counts, the world's deadliest place for LGBT people https://t.co/iCxikHnGgf
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 9, 2016
It could be a higher number than that as the Brazilian police, according to Eduard Michels, GGB’s data manager, under report or downright remove anti-gay motivations from their homicide reports.
