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Rio 2016: Pending doom or standard pre-Games bashing?

One of us recently gave a test that included this as part of a question:

“You may have missed this story in this morning’s USA Today but there was a piece about the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics noting how challenges keep piling up. From the Zika virus outbreak to severe water pollution, from behind-schedule venues to delayed metro lines, from sluggish ticket sales to cuts in services, from Brazil’s deep financial crisis to impeachment proceedings against its president.”

Interestingly, as the test was being given, the other one of us was in Rio asking locals (cab drivers, servers, etc.) who spoke English about the Zika virus. Guess what? They had no idea what we were asking about.

So, is there really trouble in the Cidade Maravilhosa (the Marvelous City), or is this just standard pre-Games muckraking by the global sports media machine, desperately delivering salacious stories before the athletes and actors take the stage?

We ask because it always seems fashionable to bash the host city in the run-up to the Games. Look at what the proverbial Greek choruses sang during the last 12 years:

Athens wouldn’t be ready on time.

Beijing would displace residents (not to mention cats and dogs) and suffer from air pollution.

London would need extraordinary security measures.

Sochi was spending too much money (all while offending human rights activists and making access to the events difficult).

Now, along comes Brazil, and columnists and bloggers are descending like locusts proclaiming everything is impossibly wrong. Are things that bad? Will Rio fail to stage the Games? We think not.

But maybe the attention is necessary, or by design. Any good event planner knows to set the bar low enough to easily exceed expectations. In Rio’s case, expectations are so low right now that if the Brazilians deliver high-quality Games, everyone will look great. Could that be the Rio strategy?

Take the Zika virus, for example. Yes, it’s something any traveler to Brazil should consider and be ready for. More importantly, if a woman is pregnant or planning to get pregnant, extra caution is required (and staying home may be a wise decision). But, and this is an important warning, there are many other tropical viruses and medical concerns with great potential to affect athlete performance or visitor health.

Like many of you, we’ve traveled the globe, having visited nearly 100 countries, many of which don’t have winter to kill things off, and the normal rules always apply: drink bottled water, attempt to eat well-cooked food, etc. So while Zika is getting all the ink and tweets, there are other medical environmental concerns (as there are in many international cities) that warrant the same health or lifestyle concerns for anyone going abroad.

Second, despite these many issues and threats noted above, the Games have never been rescheduled for political or unpreparedness reasons. On one occasion (1976 Winter Olympic Games), they were moved from Denver when the local populace voted against the investment needed for capital projects. Also, on five occasions, the Games were canceled due to world wars. This includes three Summer Olympic Games: 1916 (awarded to Berlin), 1940 (Tokyo) and 1944 (London), and two Winter Olympic Games: 1940 (Sapporo, Japan) and 1944 (Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy).

So is the braying of the media (and we belong to that very pack) a professional service freely provided on a daily basis to provoke the Brazilians into a greater sense of urgency? Or, does the media just need eyeballs and clickbait?
We’d guess yes in response to both questions. But maybe a more constructive engagement would be howling about the sustainability promises of 2009 (when Rio won the bid) and ensuring the promised facilities are usable after the circus leaves town.

One of us recently showed internet images in class of Athens taken in 2014, 10 years after those Games ended. The photographs featured overgrown stadiums and cracked concrete floors and walls where the world’s best athletes once competed. It was horrific, and we felt for the Greek architects and project managers who were abused by the press in 2003-04 only to see their efforts abandoned once the Games moved on.

If Brazil is to be provoked, it is our hope concepts such as best practices and long-term strategic planning will be employed to benefit Rio’s future children, who someday will learn their city once hosted the greatest of sporting spectacles. What a shame it would be if they looked upon so many glorious ruins, like a modern Machu Picchu, and wondered how so many people got it wrong. Why wasn’t this swimming pool or stadium ever used again? Why was this track closed? Why was so much money spent on a whitewater kayak course only for our leaders to drain the facility and allow it to become an overgrown canal of weeds for the curious or mischievous?

Are we unkind here? Is our concern misplaced? Are we as guilty as those we accuse? Perhaps. But it hardly seems fitting — in the few months remaining between the publication of this column and the Games — to imagine the benefit found in generating more negative coverage for an event designed to foster peace among the nations and showcase opportunities for the world’s greatest athletes.

Yes, Brazil needs to get cracking, and there are serious issues in the wind. But let’s hope Rio circa 2020 is still a place where great sporting events are contested in facilities built for the year the world visited the Marvelous City.

Rick Burton (rhburton@syr.edu) is the David B. Falk Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University and former chief marketing officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Norm O’Reilly (oreillyn@ohio.edu) is the Richard P. & Joan S. Fox Professor of Business at Ohio University and partner consultant with T1.

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