Zimbalist Andrew - Rio 2016

RIO 2016

OLYMPIC MYTHS, HARD REALITIES

ANDREW ZIMBALIST

EDITOR

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

Washington, D.C.

Copyright 2017

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

ISBN 978-0-8157-3245-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8157-3246-4 (ebook)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset in Sabon Roman

Composition by Westchester Publishing Services

Contents

ANDREW ZIMBALIST

JULES BOYKOFF

JULIANA BARBASSA

THERESA WILLIAMSON

RENATA LATUF DE OLIVEIRA SANCHEZ AND STEPHEN ESSEX

JAMIL CHADE

JULIANA BARBASSA

JULES BOYKOFF

ANDREW ZIMBALIST

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Nashwa Al-sharki, Allison Stewart, Rodrigo Capelo Nunes, Kaia Sand, Jessi Wahnetah, Gilmar Mascarenhas, Orlando Santos Junior, Christopher Gaffney, Larissa Lacerda, Renata Neder, Andrea Florence, the Fulbright Scholar Program, Pacific University, Smith College, and the remarkable people at Catalytic Communities in Rio de Janeiro. We would like to thank cariocasthe residents of Riofor their grace and patience with our questions and those affiliated with the Economic Geography group of the University of Zurich for their support, friendship, and a room with a view during a crucial year of research and writing.

Introduction

Welcome to Hell

ANDREW ZIMBALIST

Rio de Janeiros hosting the 2016 Summer Olympic Games was to be the crowning achievement of three decades of democracy and economic development. Rio and Brazil would enter the first world, Rios favelas would be modernized, its violent drug gangs rooted out, its sports and transportation infrastructure enhanced, and the city and country would share its good fortunes on the world stage. Reality, however, impinged on what was to have been and played a cruel trick on Rio and Brazil.

Olympics development magic doesnt even work for developed cities.Games, the host city finds itself with less available land (Beijing dedicated 8,400 acres of real estate to hosting in 2008), more venues of limited use to maintain, environmental degradation, social dislocation, mountains of financial debt, and, generally, a modicum of additional infrastructure, some of which is useful to the citys development but most of which is of low priority.

After each Olympics and the disappointing economic outcome, the IOC puts its well-oiled propaganda machine to work. Try as it does, the IOC public relations effort lately has had little success. City after city is losing interest in hosting the three-week Olympics extravaganza: five European cities dropped out of the competition to host the 2022 Winter Games, and Boston, Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome decided not to go forward with their candidacies to host the 2024 Summer Games. Tokyo won the right to host the 2020 Summer Olympics with a bid of $7.1 billion, but a September 2016 report commissioned by the city of Tokyo projected costs of $30 billion. The IOC could not withstand more bad news, especially after the Rio 2016 experience, and its vice president, John Coates, made this clear, stating that Tokyos high costs could scare off cities considering bids for future Olympics. The IOCs concern was its bidding process, not Tokyos fiscal mess.

It took the International Olympic Committee three months to come up with its definitive characterization of the Rio Summer Games: the most perfect imperfect Games, declared IOC spokesperson Mark Adams in early December 2016. Its a catchy turn of phrase (albeit grammatically flawed); if we only knew what it meant. Does it mean that the Games were perfectly imperfectthe epitome of imperfection? Or imperfectly perfectalmost perfect? Or is it just obfuscation?

One thing is clear. When the Games ended on August 22, 2016, the IOC breathed a deep sigh of relief and then bid farewell to Rio. To the IOC, Rio now became little more than a historical artifact and an object of spin.

The lead-up to Rio 2016 was harrowing for the IOC. Everything was going wrong and there was legitimate concern that the Games would be disastrous, perhaps Mexico 1968, Munich 1972, and Montreal 1976 all rolled into one. Consider the litany of troubling news emanating from Rio in the months leading up to August 5, 2016.

Rios state government announced that eighty-four people were killed by police in May, a 91 percent increase from a year earlier. Street muggings were up 43 percent during the five months of 2016, with 9,968 cases in May alone. That number rose to a record 10,701 muggings on the streets of Rio in July.

Second, corruption, long a constant in Brazilian politics, began to spin out of control. The oil bonanza and the massive construction projects, many of them connected to hosting the World Cup and the Olympics, were simply too much opportunity for gain for Brazilian politicians and construction companies to forego. Brazils hosting of the World Cup and Olympics created a wide window for the world to watch the countrys biggest corruption scandal (Lava Jato, or Car Wash), along with the graft of World Cup and Olympics contracting, campaign financing, and more. (These scandals are discussed at length in Barbassas chapter, Brazils Olympic Rollercoaster.)

Most notorious perhaps, less than three months before the 2016 Games began, a gang of venal politicians alleged that President Dilma Rousseff was guilty of manipulating the countrys budget for political ends. The allegations were never proven, but Rousseff was suspended from office on May 12 and then removed permanently after the Games were over. The impeachment gambits true purpose was to distract Brazilians from the wider rings of corruption that had infiltrated the government and to prepare for a congressional clemency vote for compromised politicians.

Understandably, the breakdown of services, the revelation of vast corruption, the extensive layoffs and failure to pay workers, the growing violence, and the waste of Olympics spending provoked widespread and militant political protest. Perhaps most visible to the outside world was the protest staged by police and firefighters just five weeks before the opening ceremonies at Rios International airport, warning visitors that the city was not safe, with one large sign stating Welcome to Hell. The police, firefighters, and other public workers threatened to go on strike during the Olympic Games.

Amid this social, economic, and political turmoil, the Rio Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (ROCOG) was scrambling to prepare the city for the event. And not everything was going so well. It was unclear if the new Line 4 metro to Barra da Tijuca would be functional or if many of the competition and related venues would be ready. ROCOG had run out of money. In July 2016 the Rio city government allocated an extra $46 million to help with last-minute preparations, and following a declaration of a state of calamity by the state governor, a further $890 million was committed by the federal government in emergency aid to help complete the Line 4 metro and provide Games-related security, including the payment of wages to police to patrol the streets. The sports venues were supposed to have test events. Many didnt. Some that did failed. Power supply to all venues was in question. ROCOG announced that many venues with temporary seating would have significant reductions in capacity. Meanwhile, the temporary seating in some arenas was not stress tested before the competition. Only 15 percent of the planned promotional, decorative, and directional signage was installed. Construction was rushed and, in many places, shoddy. As athletes arrived at their village days before the competition began, they found lodging with dysfunctional plumbing and electricity. Some teams were forced to relocate temporarily and the Australian team refused to move in. There were ten reported construction-related deaths.