Why Rio Was Not the Right Choice for the Olympics

With the 2016 Olympics now officially underway in Rio de Janeiro, the many competitors across the 39 sports have begun taking part in their events. Unfortunately, it hasn’t stopped the negativity surrounding the decision for the Olympics to be held in Rio. There were quite a few reasons why people were against such a major sporting event being held here, but as the time has gone on, the negativity has seemingly picked up more and more steam.

At this point, is it safe to say that Rio was not the right choice for the 2016 Olympics? At the very least, it’s hard to argue the other way on that topic. So, we’re going to take a look at a few key reasons as to why Rio just wasn’t the right choice for where these games should have been held. Let’s start it off with one of the biggest, and scariest complaints of the bunch.

Zika virus

A virus so serious that it could legitimately cause birth defects. As you can imagine, this has been a concern for many, and the end result was many of the world’s top athletes choosing not to take part in the games due to the scare of this virus.

It goes without saying that not only does athletes pulling out of the games impact each sport, but more importantly, this virus is downright scary. This alone was probably enough of a reason for some to push for why Rio was not the right choice.

Pollution in the water

 

While not all of the sports are in the water, the fact is, the water in Rio is nothing short of terrible. As ABC News reports, the Olympic beach water included high levels of bacteria. It’s so bad, that the following was stated about it:

“The levels that we reviewed were higher than we would expect in the United States,” said Jennifer Carey, the founding principal and CEO of JLC Environmental Consultants. “The diseases that could affect people that are exposed to these types of pathogens could be an acute respiratory disease, things like typhoid, hepatitis, gastroenteritis, dysentery and even ear infections.”

To go along with that, the New York Times stated that athletes will literally be swimming in “human crap,” which is obviously just a bit concerning. Things don’t look good, but to this point, there haven’t been any reports of anything terrible happening. With that said, we’re still hoping that the water doesn’t leave any lasting impact on any of the athletes.

Housing at Olympic Village

With the United States men’s and women’s basketball teams both staying on a cruise ship instead of at Olympic Village, that probably tells the whole story. While the Olympic Village is typically known as being a beautiful place, apparently it’s not up to par this year. Recently, Cosmopolitan spoke about the many horror stories that came along with the Olympic Village.

A few of those issues included water coming down the walls, robberies, fire alarms not working, a “gas leak smell,” and a few other things. As you can tell, the housing really isn’t what we had all hoped it would be, and apparently, people aren’t too thrilled with that.

Rio de Janeiro’s financial crisis

It’s not just Brazil who’s been hit by this over past Olympics, and as CNBC explains, the price tag of hosting the Olympics is over $10 billion. Unfortunately, that massive number obviously really hurt Rio de Janeiro and a report from FOX News stated that the governor of Rio’s state government, Francisco Dornelles, declared “a state of financial disaster” back in June. The statement read as follows:

“The financial crisis has brought several difficulties in essential public services and it could cause the total collapse of public security, health care, education, urban mobility and environmental management,” the statement said.

As the story from FOX News explained, the decision allowed Rio to be able to “adopt exceptional measures” to help pay for the ridiculous costs associated with hosting the Olympics.

Overall, this was just a terrible spot for Rio, and it just tacks on to everything else when it comes to why they were not the right choice to host the 2016 Olympics.