Quit your moaning, Rio hosting the Olympics was the right decision, writes Robert Craddock
TAKING the Olympics to Rio was a great decision because it has connected the Games to the way most people on the planet live. It’s about time the Olympics roughed it.
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TAKING the Olympics to Rio was a great decision because it has connected the Games to the way most people on the planet live.
It’s been tipped for seven years that these would be the Rough N Tumble Games and so it has proved.
All those stories about shaken shower curtains, broken down lifts, swimming pools as green as your dish washing liquid are true and you will read plenty more of them before these Games are over.
But that does not mean it was a bad decision to come here. Quite the contrary.
Some things haven’t worked here but plenty has. The food has been outstanding, the venues unpretentious but generally sound and sometimes spectacular, the crowds passable, the transport surprisingly fluent.
To say Brazil was not worth the risk was like saying Australian cricket teams should never have toured India a few decades ago because hotels were poor.
As much as we all hate a cold shower there is such a things as the big picture and the greater good.
It’s about time the Olympics roughed it.
Next stop India? Surely it should concern Games officials that the country with a fifth of the world’s population has won just nine Olympic gold medals (eight in hockey) and has shown as little interest in the Games as the Games has shown in India.
The real world for most people on the planet is far closer to life in Rio, where the average wage is about $600 a month.
Fly over Rio and the overwhelming impression, apart from this entrancing natural coastline and mountains, is the fact that, most of the city lives in poverty. The country is in the midst of its worst economic crisis for decades which meant budgets were tight and fancy trimmings minimal.
Australia was always going to have a long loud first world whinge early on about little things that went wrong.
We love branding the English whingeing Poms but it’s the one area of the Games where we finisher higher on the podium than they do.
In fact, there has barely been a peep of criticism from any English athlete or officials these Games. They just sucked it up. And have you seen where they are on the medal table?
The man Australia should have had here was the liaison officer who was not invited this time, former Test cricket captain Steve Waugh whose many trips to India would have given him a sagely presence here.
Few whinged as much as a young Waugh on his early trips to India then the penny dropped one day that as soon as you start whingeing you lose the battle and he grew to embrace the country for its all its joys and blemishes and now loves it.
These have been an unpretentious, unvarnished Games. They are pleasantly more relaxed than Beijing where everything was painfully choreographed to within an inch of its life.
They are far less commercial than most Games such as any in America where you half expect Mickey Mouse to carry the Olympic torch. At many venues in Rio you can barely spot a sponsor’s name.
Yes there has been petty crime and general tension on the streets but also stories about taxi drivers stopping and following journalists down the street after realising they paid too much for their fare and hotel maids returning money left in washing.
Crowds have been of respectable size and enthusiastic but there is a not a rich attachment or heritage to the Games in a nation which averages about one gold medal per Olympics. Soccer is their top sport, followed by soccer, soccer and then beach volleyball.
Volcanic explosions can be heard in bars and restaurants when a Brazilian scores a goal in the soccer or there is a beach volleyball spike.
It used to be custom for the Olympic head honcho to tell the world at the end of every Games that “these have been the greatest Games ever.’’
There is no need for Thomas Bach to put it in his notes. Rio is not the best Games but it’s not the worst either.
Those who showed a bit of Brazilience and got on with the job are the one we are seeing on top on the podium and will return home richer for the experience of having visited this mysterious, dangerous, captivating corner of the world.
Originally published as Quit your moaning, Rio hosting the Olympics was the right decision, writes Robert Craddock
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