It seems like there are news articles about how Rio isn’t ready to host the Olympics coming out weekly. There are bodies washing up on the beaches to be used for volleyball and chlorine-resistant parasites in the pools and severe pollution in the rowing waters in addition to the Zika virus we’ve been hearing about since January. There are also the long-standing issues of the generally unsafe and murder-prone nature of the city and rampant, largely-unchecked corruption.
The IOC should be ashamed of themselves.
Rio should not be hosting the Olympics, and while I don’t mean to exempt them from blame for this, the buck ultimately stops at the IOC. Sure, it was short-sighted and self-serving for Rio to bid to host the Games, but I can understand the desire to bring more international spotlight to your country, especially after infrastructure investments had been made for the 2014 World Cup. But the IOC made a mistake in picking Rio.