Leading up to the Olympics I saw a lot of articles predicting disaster and criticizing everything from pollution to crime to shoddy construction. I have seen very little about how those problems have actually panned out. Now that the Olympics are on, what is the verdict?
You’re not going to see it on the TV. Looks great from the couch at home, but I bet if your boots were on the ground there, you’d see some shit.
A lot of problems are being reported. NBC reported a sharp drop in ratings for the opening ceremony, and I suspect the same for the rest of their coverage. It’s not just the problems in Rio, international sports in general are developing a bad reputation because of numerous scandals. So far there’s been plenty of reporting on Zika, contaminated water, Brazil’s budgetary problems, hiding the poor and impoverished in Rio, crime, unfinished housing for athletes, poor security, the whole doping issue, and then there will be the controversies that follow because of biased judging.
Especially if you looked in the harbor.
Swimmers getting sick from the bad water isn’t going to show for a while. Pregnant women getting the Zika virus and having deformed babies won’t show up for many months.
The pattern was similar with the Russian Winter Olympics. Leading up all the stories were how it would be a complete shit show, then the games start, people compete, the games end and everyone moves on.
People are making the best of it. These athletes trained for this moment. It’s the pinnacle achievement for many of them.
It will take more than shoddy and incomplete construction to ruin their fun.
The US basketball team is staying on a ship. They aren’t in the Olympic village. It’s their loss. They are missing out on a lot of comradeship and a lifetime of memories.
So far, the game facilities seem fine. But the pollution issues won’t be as noticeable on our TVs.
A kayaker in training crashed into a sofa in the water.
The pattern is similar with every Olympic Games. In the week before, a billion and one journalists turn up and they are required to file a story every day. So they rake muck. That muck may or may not be real.
Then the games start, the journalists have sports stories to talk about and that’s that.
Not an unreasonable thing to do, given a kidnapping and ransom of one of those guys with their enormous wealth would feed your favela for a couple of years. Staying in a dorm in downtown Rio doesn’t seem sensible.
Every since the BRICS* have started hosting major sporting events, breathless speculation of disaster in the run-up has become an established genre. Given the magnitude of those events, there is always going to be something journalists can dig up.
And there seems to be a pretty solid audience for these stories. I would guess it reflects our uneasiness with the rise of the BRICS and discomfort with global power shifts more than anything else. A lot of people are looking to make themselves feel better by imagining these countries aren’t capable of doing the things that “real” countries can do.
- An economic grouping referring to the emerging economic power in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
I have been wondering about those reports all along. In 25 years of traveling to Rio and crossing Guanabara Bay in ferries many times, I never saw anything like that.
The aroma has always been more of a pungent fish smell to me (I always imagined Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row” when around Guanabara Bay).
No, I wouldn’t want to swim in it, but I have never seen raw sewage floating on the surface.
That is hilarious.
For that, you can stay in the USA. Redondo beach in California has plenty. :eek:
–G!
Unless conditions on the ground directly effect the journalists themselves that is; then we hear no end of horror stories concerning the games. Atlanta is widely considered one of the poorest games of modern times. It’s my conviction that the reason for the bad reputation of the Atlanta games is largely because of traffic congestion experienced by journalists at the time.
I thought the big story about the Atlanta games was the Centennial Olympic Park bombing:
They kind of need to prove it by taking care of “real country” business like having safe drinking water, sewage treatment, garbage collection, etc… instead of doing things like putting on Olympics and spending absurd amounts of money on that, rather than on more important things.
I mean, when I hear about the polluted bay and what-not in Brazil, I don’t really think condescending thoughts about the people themselves, but rather wonder what sorts of assholes they’ve elected who value the Olympics over spending that money on things that actually are useful and improve the quality of life.
Somewhere like the Uk, no big deal, they have flush toilets and drinkable water. But Brazil? That money could be better spent on basics.
Anyone know of any studies on how people as a whole react to big event and spectacles and “prestige-building” events v. improving standards of living (slowly or quickly)? I mean, which to electorates respond to more favorably in the short and long term? Which do they actually have the impetus to achieve? Which generates more media attention? More national pride? More votes?
Does the vastness of problems lead to people thinking it’s “too big” and just concentrating on something else?