The 2016 Olympics Games in Rio are a mess before they’ve even begun. According to reports, Olympic organizers are so worried about the progress of the 2016 Rio venues that they’ve put in an unofficial request to London to see if their 2012 Olympic venues could be brought back to host the games.
If London agrees and the IOC decides to go with that decision, then it would mark an unprecedented turn in Olympic history – it would be the first time a country hosted back-to-back Olympics in a long time.
Right now, the Rio infrastructure for the games is reportedly in shambles, with costs rising higher and higher, ‘accusations of negligence‘, and almost every venue being behind schedule. IOC vice-president John Coates even called Brazil’s preparations for the Olympics the ‘worst’ that he’s ever experienced.
And don’t forget, the country also has a World Cup to host this summer. That means that all their current concentration is focused towards prepping for the world cup, and then the country will need time to recover and then re-focus their attentions towards the Olympics. At this rate, they’ll never, ever finish with the preparations for the games.
Understanding the precarious position that they’re in, Brazil has reportedly set up a special task force that will be in charge of speeding up the preparations and getting the country ready for the Olympics in 2016. However, at this same point in the cycle, London had almost completed most of its venues and was fully prepped to host the games. Will Brazil manage to catch up in time, or will London have to play host to the Olympics yet again?
A source tells the Evening Standard, “At a comparable planning stage in 2004 Athens had done 40 per cent of preparations on infrastructure, stadiums and so on. London had done 60 per cent. Brazil has done 10 per cent – and they have just two years left. So the IOC is thinking, ‘What’s our plan B?’ Obviously, the answer would be to come back to London. It’s very unlikely but it would be the logical thing to do.”
Plus, there’s also the fact that Rio is not the safest place in the world, and I think Olympics organizers realize that. The Olympics is very different to the World Cup, which has its own set of fans and comes with an innate understanding of rowdiness. The Olympics, on the other hand, will require a level of security that is unprecedented for Rio, which will make the entire event that much more difficult to organize and pull off without controversy.
London has hosted the Olympics in an emergency situation before, when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 1908, and the venue moved from Italy to London. However, London is still a ‘worst-case scenario’, and the IOC is still ‘officially’ planning to host the Games in Rio, provided they can get their act together. Plus, most of London’s 2012 venues have already been converted to public use, and it would take a lot of money, time, and effort to get them ready for the Games again.
