Coming up very soon, all eyes will be on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rio, as most of you know, is the host of this year Olympics that will be held between August 5th and 21st. The Olympics is a great honor to host and every four years you get to see competitions that you never get to see or never hear of unless you are involved with it yourself. Countries bid to host the Olympics and hope to get selected in order to host the games in the hope that it will give their country and the host city, a huge economic boost. The only problem with this is, a lot of your host cities and host and countries are not ready and unfortunately, never will be.
So much work goes into the Olympics and a lot of times what you put into it, you will not come close to earning back. First off, when placing a bid for the Olympics, most cities and countries will start building new infrastructure to show that they are willing and capable of hosting the event. Before you even bid, you are already at the potential to be millions of dollars into it before you are even selected as a finalist. Once you are selected, almost a decade before you host, it is time to start working to get everything in place. The host city and the Olympic committee work together to make a plan, but it is the host city to show that they are on track to meet all the requirements or the committee can withdraw the bid and find a place that is ready to host right away. This is where we will get back to Rio; they knew they were going to host, so why has it taken them so long to get ready? This always happens, the host is never ready and then all of a sudden, it comes together like there was never a worry in the world, but in Rio, it may not happen.
All that stuff that I have said so far is basically leading to a few simple questions: should the Olympics continue to be held in Brazil? Is it safe? Will they recover after the Olympics have come and gone? Unfortunately, I do believe the answer to all these questions is a no. First off, there is no way that the Olympic committee should have allowed this to go so far. They have seen that Brazil as a whole is very unstable and corrupt. They have already overthrown one President, Dilma Rousseff, and the new one has yet to be selected as they are currently using an interim president. Politically, Brazil is a place you want absolutely nothing to do with right now, but when there is money to get made, no worries, the world will not allow something as petty as politics bring down an event of this size.
The people in power wanted the Olympics, no questions about that, they want to be able to show their country to the world in hopes to build up tourism and put money in their pockets. The one thing that people around the world do not know is that the people of Brazil do not want these Olympic games, about like how they did not want the FIFA World Cup just a short two years ago. They asked a resident of Rio if he wanted the Olympics in his city and he said, “No, this is for the world and has nothing to do with the locals, we would have never asked for this.” Brazil spent billions for the world cup and they only really got about $500 million back since they are unable to keep the money from the event, all that goes to FIFA (about 4 billion), so the Olympics can only set them back even further.
With all the craziness that is going on there, this has lead to many riots across Rio. Even this week there was a Paralympic star that was assaulted upon her arrival. Face it; they do not want anyone there. If Brazil was doing more to help the people other than stuffing their on pockets at the top, things may go off without a hitch, but until they place some of the money in building jobs, education and building the travel infrastructure for it's on people, the people who live in Rio and other places in Brazil, could care less about the Olympics. I was down there in a host city of the World Cup, Belo Horizonte, and by the time I had landed back in the states, there were signs hanging at the airport saying “tourist go home, you are not welcome.” The sport that the country loves, soccer, basically a religion down there, did not even go well for them with the World Cup. Until the country starts to help its own, it could care less about the millions of people who will be there for another big event like the Olympics.
The big reason that you see many big names dropping out of the Olympics is due to the Zika virus. We have all heard about the disease that is transmitted by misquotes and is said to lead to birth defects in newborn babies like Microcephaly. Yes, the number of cases has gone down but that still does not mean there is not a huge risk associated with going to the games, really since there is no cure as of yet. Also, for the water surrounding Rio, there is a talk of a “super bacteria” that also has no cure that people will be having to be in for certain events. So with two medical reasons that could leave to long-term health defects, why would anyone put themselves in that position?
Overall, and in all honesty, it would be best if people did not go to the Olympics to make sure they stay healthy, and to make sure that you do not get caught up in any violence with the locals. Face it, these Olympics should have never been held and all Brazil will have to show for it is being millions of dollars in depth and having buildings, gold courses, arenas and hotels that will never be used again.
