Well wishes for the Rio Olympics

This time next week the world will already be focused on Rio de Janeiro, host city of the 2016 Olympic Games, an event described as the Greatest Show On Earth and which many people regard as the most compelling search for excellence in sport.

More than 6,000 volunteers, we are told, have been rehearsing for almost three months to ensure that the Brazil Government’s promise of a well-organised, orderly and enjoyable Games will be realised from the August 5 opening ceremony in Rio’s Maracana Stadium at 8:00 pm (6:00 pm Jamaica time) through to August 21 when the event ends.

Like all Olympic host cities before, Rio is getting a lot of flak on a range of pre-Games issues, such as not being fully prepared, to filthy water that, it is claimed, will affect competitors in the aquatic events, to uncomfortable accommodation for athletes.

In fact, a report in USA Today on Thursday pointed to these and other issues and stated that “given all the issues reported with wiring, plumbing and flooding, organisers will be lucky if all the buildings are ready before the Games open”.

This week, though, Jamaica received comforting information from athletics team leader Mr Ludlow Watts that our team is settling in nicely at the Olympic Athletes’ Village and is not encountering any of the reported problems being experienced by others.

“Everything is going well so far at both the training base and the hotel,” Mr Watts told the Jamaica Observer during a training session on Wednesday. “The facilities are excellent, and I don’t see why anybody should complain.”

We take Mr Watts at his word and hope that there will be no hiccups affecting Jamaica’s 63-member team as they will compete better without discomfort and distractions.

All Jamaicans, we are sure, are hoping that the team will increase its medal haul from the 12 – four gold, four silver and four bronze – mined at the 2012 London Games, compared to the 11 – six gold, three silver and two bronze – earned in Beijing in 2008.

On that score, we wish the team well and we are especially looking forward to the feats of the incomparable Mr Usain Bolt, who is seeking to create history as the first man ever to win gold in the 100m, 200m, and 4 x 100m at three consecutive Olympics.

Of course, the cost of hosting the Games of the XXXI Olympiad has been a burning topic in Brazil which is now in its second year of economic recession. An Oxford university study projected that the Games will run US$1.6 billion over budget. However, even with that massive overspend, the total cost of US$4.6 billion was still modest, compared with what was spent by previous host cities, such as London and Barcelona.

In fact, news reports this week have told us that on average, since 1960, host cities have spent US$5.2 billion in inflation-adjusted terms on the Olympics and, in the last decade, the cost has shot up, with each game averaging US$8.9 billion.

Those facts, though, will not soothe the anger felt by some Brazilians who believe that the money spent on the Games could have been put to better use on improving social services.

It’s usually a tough call for governments. However, we hope that the investment in infrastructure in Rio will pay dividends to the city’s residents, and to Brazil on a whole, for future decades.