Rio 2016 - Unbelievable

Rio will be the first South-American city - ever - to host the Summer Olympic games. The miracle will supposedly take place in 2016.

This piece of news troubles me, as a Brazilian, to great extent. Olympics are a huge problem anywhere they go. They can surely boost local economy, leverage urban changes and the like but we are still talking about massive problems here. The Olympics are notorious for running massively over budget. That’s a fact anywhere and should be a huge negative factor in a well-known culture of overly budgeted public endeavors. The organizing committees are always entangled in power games to get their paws on some of those Olympics dollars. That’s another common Olympics fact and should be even worse in a country were power games and public money are already so mixed up that no one really knows what is happening.

We are also talking about a gigantic lack of prioritization here. Rio is a poor city, with millions of miserable people, with crime rate going trough the roof, no urban planning, no proper educational system, no public medicare and the list would go on and on. All these - and many others - are light-years more important than Olympic games. Even considering sports alone, Brazil has no efficient policies. Athletes are forced to self-sponsor or fight for sponsors by themselves because there’s no public support coming from national bodies.

There’s a last point that keeps screaming in my mind. Any international event like the Olympics require massive management and organizational efforts which are certainly not promptly available in Brazil. As an example, the Soccer World Cup that will supposedly take place in 2014 in there has had no official kick-off as of now. This is highly problematic and, it comes with no surprise, that FIFA has its own emergency plan if Brazil cannot host the games. Strangely enough, as an average manager I believe I am, I have very palpable plans for my life, my career and even my leisure activities for the next 5 years. Brazil has not even started planning. This is a very bad start and shows that we are clearly not ready.

I’ve recently seen the magnitude of organization and construction work that was carried out for the Olympic games in Beijing last year and I can summarize it like this: “Rio has not even a remote chance of doing 20% of what was done in Beijing!” The international Olympics committee is out of its mind or started believing in magic recently.

Pan-2007 was a nightmare for Rio and for the athletes. The world seems to forget things to quickly or simply believe that a city can solve its centenary problems in mere 7 years but, starting from our lack of prioritization, I would say we don’t look very promising.