With barely seven weeks to go before the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics, the declaration of bankruptcy by the host city’s interim governor is an unprecedented case. The build-up to any Olympic Games has been historically replete with reports of delays in construction of infrastructure, overshooting budgets or protests of varying agendas. The declaration of a “state of calamity” by Francisco Dornelles is, nevertheless, a serious one and it is not going to help confidence levels — though ground reports on the preparations seem to be on a better scale than on the eve of the 2014 Fifa World Cup.
The Federal government announced it would bail Rio out of the financial crisis before the Olympics, though there are other battles of perception that the organising committee needs to address — sooner rather than later. Opinions are still divided on the actual threat of the Zika virus, though Rio must have received a shot in the arm with the World Health Organisation’s ruling last week that there is a very low risk of the mosquito-borne disease spreading internationally from public gatherings during the Games.
It was no doubt an ambitious venture on the part of Brazil to bid for two of the biggest sporting showpieces — the football World Cup and the Olympics — within a space of just two years. Rio had a budget projection of $240 million (Dh882.72 million) for the Olympics. London 2012, incidentally, had done a commendable job of staging a cost-effective Olympics and leaving a legacy in terms of infrastructure such as housing. It will be quite a challenge for Rio to emulate that and show it was a prudent move to host the Olympics.
