As yet there has been no connection made between the Olympics and the wider corruption issues, but Rio’s Mayor, Eduardo Paes – the Games’ chief architect – has been linked to ex-President Lula. And a recently leaked recording of a telephone conversation between the two men exposed how much the mayor is banking on the event for personal advancement: he had hoped a successful staging would propel him into the presidency. More significantly, the crisis has meant a temporary freeze on new government spending, thus curtailing the emergency central funding Paes was hoping to call on for last-minute infrastructure improvements.
Transport
Rio’s Achilles heel. The city’s metro system is decades behind that in London. On the roads the rocky spine of hills that splits downtown from the Barra area, where the Olympic Park is sited, creates a natural bottleneck; last week it took 90 minutes to drive from the athletes’ village to the Joao Havelange athletics stadium. Since the road link is in places single carriageway, even Olympic lanes are unlikely to speed the flow.
But the worst news involves the new subway line, which was intended to whisk spectators to and from the park. The deadline for completion is July 1; test trains were due to be running on the track late last month. But since the rails have not yet been laid along much of the route, and several bridges remain in a state of half-completion, that seems unfeasible. More than 10,000 workers are engaged on the project. Pictures posted on social media of a group of them having a mid-morning nap under an as-yet unfinished viaduct, however, did not communicate a gathering sense of urgency.
Pollution
For the past 150 years much of Rio’s sewage – and a good proportion of its rubbish – has been daily dumped into Guanabara Bay. The first initiative to clean up the mess dates from 1866. But it was the decision to site the Olympic sailing in the Bay, with its photogenic backdrop of Sugar Loaf mountain, that finally concentrated minds.