Rio 2016 Olympics
How Brazil got the Games: persistance, practice
By MIMI WHITEFIELD
mwhitefield@MiamiHerald.com
How did Brazil manage to land two of the world’s major sporting events back to back? Certainly not overnight. In fact, the feat has been nearly two decades in the making.Brazil’s Olympic aspirations began back in 1991 when it considered pushing for Brasilia, its capital, as the site of the 2000 Olympics. Then in 1995, with a new mayor in place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil decided to bid for the 2004 Olympics.“We missed that one,” said Leonardo Gryner, chief executive of Rio 2016. “After that bid we understood that we really did lack the facilities and knowledge to pull off an Olympics.”So Brazil’s strategy became seeking out regional games as an interim step toward becoming an Olympic host.
In 2002, Argentina, in the midst of an economic crisis, was having trouble organizing the South American Games. “They came desperately to us, and we organized the event in three months,” said Gryner. “That started to send a message to the world about our ability to stage big events.”
But Brazil’s big coup was when it beat out San Antonio for the 2007 Pan American Games, an event that brought together some 6,000 athletes.
“This was a very important political decision. All levels of government agreed that the Pan American Games should be used to prepare for the Olympics,” said Gryner.
The Pan Am Games ran smoothly, had the highest public attendance and largest television audience in Pan Am history and showed that Brazil’s three levels of government — federal, state and municipal — could cooperate in hosting a major sporting event.
Many of the major sports venues for the Olympics were already built to host the Pan Am Games, but Brazil still must work on a new tennis center, a golf course, upgrade some facilities and put up temporary sites for sports such as bici-cross, mountain biking and canoe slalom. This so-called X Park will be used for skateboarding after the Games.
Golf and rugby became Olympic sports a week after Brazil won its bid. Of the two, finding a place to chip and putt will be the most problematic. The greater Rio area has only three golf courses and just one of them is public.
A golf task force is currently identifying locations for a new public course and hopes to make its selection by September. “There’s a lineup of people offering their services to design the course,” said Gryner.
Another important legacy of the Pan Am Games was that they helped Brazil begin preparing young athletes for world-class competition in sports beyond soccer, beach volleyball and volleyball, where it has traditionally exceled.
In 2004, in anticipation of the Pan Ams, Brazil organized its first school and university games in the 12-14 and 15-17 age groups. Now there are more than one million kids from all over Brazil who participate and 3,000 who take part in the finals from each age group, Gryner said.
“Before this, there really was no national system to develop talent,” said Gryner.
During the Pan Am Games, Brazil also distributed 300,000 free tickets to schools and low-income people. “It was a great promotion for new sports,” Gryner said.
One of the byproducts, he said, “is we now have two beautiful badminton projects” in the favelas, including one in Rocinha, Rio’s largest shantytown.
” Solar City Tower “, built atop the island of Cotonduba will be the welcome symbol to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro …
It will be seen by the game visitors and participants as they arrive by air or water. The tower, captures solar energy. It will supply energy for all of the Olympic city, as well as also for part of Rio. It pumps up water from the ocean to create what appears like a water fall and this fall stimulates turbines that produce energy during the night.
It will also hold the Olympic flame.
The Tower possesses an amphitheatre, an auditorium, a cafeteria and boutiques. Elevators lead to various observatories. It also has a retractable platform for the practice of bungee jumping.
At the summit is an observation point to appreciate the scenery of the land and ocean, as well as the water fall.
Solar City Tower will be the point of reference for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro .
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