The time has come yet again, for champions to be crowned and for sports personalities to outdo each other– Olympics! The biggest sport meeting of the world, which takes place only once every four years, is about to open its doors this August. Brazil, the hometown of barbecue, carnival and samba, will host this year’s Olympic Games, merely 2 years after holding the FIFA World Cup competition.
Brazil first participated at the Olympic Games in 1920, and has since sent athletes to compete in every summer edition, except for the 1928 Games. In 2009, at the 121st International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Copenhagen, Denmark- Rio de Janeiro, capital city of Brazil, was selected as the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics, beating Madrid (Spain), Tokyo (Japan) and Chicago (USA). The Olympics thus paved the way for many “firsts”:
Rio will become the first South American city to host the Summer Olympics. These will also be the first games to be held in a Portuguese-speaking country, the first to be held entirely during the host country’s winter season (the 2000 games began on 15 September – five days before the Southern Hemisphere’s vernal equinox), the first since 1968 to be held in Latin America, and the first since 2000 (and third overall) to be held in the Southern Hemisphere. And, last but not least: for the first time, a team of refugees will compete at the Olympics.
From August 5th to 21st, the huge global sporting event in Rio, will features 28 sport competitions with more than 10,500 athletes from 206 nations participating. These competitions will not only take place at 33 venues in the host city, but also at 5 other venues in the cities of São Paulo (Brazil’s largest city), Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Brasília (Brazil’s capital), and Manaus. The opening ceremony, being the first highlight of the games, will be held on the evening of Friday, August 5th in the Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, and will be broadcast live on TV and on the internet.
Enjoy the nice introduction trailer for Rio 2016 with Brazilian kids:
However, as joyous as this summer may be to Brazil, every coin has two sides to it. There still are a lot of problems in the run-up to Rio 2016, which urgently need to be addressed. One of these is the preparations for the games, mostly impacted by the financial deposits of the Brazilian government. Rio’s preparations for the Olympics were regarded as the “worst ever” by the IOC (International Olympic Committee), even topping Athens’ in 2004. 2 years before the Olympics, Brazil had only managed to build 10% of all the Olympic stadiums. In comparison, Greece had completed 20% for 2004 and UK almost 60% for 2012. To this date, Rio as the host of the Olympic Games is still under construction. The railway, which should lead to the main competition locations during the Olympics, was planned to be put into operation only 4 days before the opening ceremony. Furthermore, in order to save money, Rio even tried to economize the living and training conditions for athletes from all around the world.
The next big problem is the hygiene and health situation of the country. Besides the now infamous Zika virus, which is currently widely spread across the American continents, Brazilian scientists also discovered a drug-resistant „super bacteria“ thriving in the water off the coasts of Rio de Janeiro. This includes beaches that border Guanabara Bay in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where many of the water sports are set to take place. Athletes who come into contact with the contaminated water, will probably get infected. Even more problems, such as the political crisis and the deplorable state of security, are annoying Brazil and its people. Nonetheless, official information maintains that the Olympics will still take place as planned. The organizing committee of course, further promises a competition, which will catch the eyes of the world.
Let’s watch and see how Brazil deals with the challenges over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully success will be theirs making the Olympics 2016 unforgettable. Find out which competitions will be live streamed on whatislive.com.
(NC)
Source:
Text: https://www.olympic.org/rio-2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/
http://www.sbnation.com/
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/
http://sports.163.com/
http://finance.sina.com.cn/
http://culture.ifeng.com/
Image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JzshnLAniyw/maxresdefault.jpg