Rio Olympics Analysis: Despite golden moments on field, Games deeply tarnished

RIO DE JANEIRO >> International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach chose a curious way over the weekend to try to spin the Rio Olympic Games as a success.

“I think this is a really iconic games,” Bach said. “It is also games in the middle of reality. They were not organized in a bubble. They were organized in a city where there are social problems, social divides, where real life continued, and I think it was very good for everybody.”

If Bach had only actually ventured into that reality.

The first Olympic Games held in South America ended Sunday the same way they began 17u2009days earlier: with Bach in a state of denial.

Bach, the IOC and Riou20092016 organizers promised these would be transformative games for a city and a nation stuck in its worst economic crisis since 1930 and its worst health crisis since 1918. It turns out those promises were as empty as the Olympic venues were during the games.

The Riou2009Games were a financial and logistical debacle that included suspiciously green pools, almost daily reports of violence and crime around Olympic-related locations, and a deeply flawed ticket-selling plan to those venues, most of which became money-sucking white elephants as of Sunday night. Woodstock was better organized.

Yet Bach insisted on elevating the Riou2009Games to “iconic” status.

Two months after needing an $849u2009million emergency loan from the federal government to cover Olympic-related infrastructure and security costs, Rio officials now acknowledge they will need perhaps as much as another $270u2009million to salvage an already significantly scaled back Paralympic Games next month.

“The IOC has shown that it is possible to organize Olympicu2009Games also in countries which are not at the top of the GDP (gross domestic product) ranking,” Bach said. “It has shown great solidarity and seen great solidarity.

“We have shown that we are ready to face social reality and to address this.”

With the latter statement, Bach told a big whopper larger than anything to come out of Ryan Lochte.

If nothing else these games reinforced two points: that Bach isn’t ready or willing to face hard choices and that the Riou2009Olympics did little if anything to bridge the city’s social and economic divides that they highlighted on a daily basis.

One can only wonder what Bach and other IOC members thought as they were driven in luxury sedans and SUVs through the edge of a Rio favela on their way to Sunday night’s closing ceremony at the Maracana Stadium. Or if they even bothered to look.

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No one was more affected by the games organized by Rio officials who overpromised and underdelivered than were the city’s poor. The reality is that Rio officials didn’t deliver on promises of improved sanitation, water and transportation for a wide section of the city’s population.

Calling them “a miracle” Sunday night, Bach claimed the last 17u2009days left “a much better Riou2009de Janeiro after the Olympicu2009Games.”

To a degree Bach is right. Those leaving the city’s crime-ridden neighborhoods for the suburbs near the Olympicu2009Park have indeed benefited from vastly improved transportation and other infrastructure. The Olympicu2009Village was built by Carvalho Hosken, which is owned by the Rio mayor’s billionaire financial patron, who also owned much of the land in and around the Olympicu2009Park. After the Paralympicu2009Games, the village will be converted into luxury condos and apartments by Carvalho Hosken.

The new name of the development? Ilha Pura — Pure Island.

Rio’s social and economic landscapes weren’t the only realities Bach wasn’t dealing with. He refused to make the right move and assure that the IOC approve a blanket ban of Russian athletes in Rio. As a result, Yulia Stepanova, the whistle-blower who played a leading role in exposing Russia’s state-sponsored doping program, wasn’t allowed to compete in Rio, but Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, baed and stripped of her results for a doping violation in 2013, was. Efimova won a pair of silver medals in Rio.

Doping was one in a series of reoccurring Summeru2009Olympic themes that continued in Brazil. U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo is still a national embarrassment, the U.S. men are still a mess in the 4x100 relay, and the IOC not only sold the games’ broadcasting rights to NBC but their soul as well. Then there was continued unparalleled brilliance by Jamaica’s Usain Bolt on the track and Michael Phelps in the pool and golden success by American women everywhere.

Katie Ledecky’s world-record swims, Simone Biles’ gold-medal haul in gymnastics, a sweep in the 100-meter hurdles and triumphs by the U.S. teams in water polo, basketball and rowing 8 (which has a global wiing streak that seems to have started with a win against Noah) were all expected. But perhaps the most memorable victory in Rio by an American woman was also the most unexpected: the upset by Huntington Beach’s Helen Maroulis of Japan’s Saori Yoshida, wier of three Olympic gold medals and 13u2009world titles, for Team USA’s first women’s wrestling gold medal.

Bolt swept the 100, 200 and, with his Jamaican teammates, the 4x100-meter relay at a third and final Olympic Games. The nine gold medals put him level with Fiish distance ruing great Paavo Nurmi and Carl Lewis for the most Olympic track titles. Phelps leaves Rio with five gold medals and a silver, giving him 23u2009career golds, 28u2009medals total. He floats into retirement with a new perspective on life and self-awareness.

In between commercials and changing diapers, the new father Phelps might find time to mentor his terminally juvenile teammate and rival, Lochte.

Bach and Riou20092016 organizers should send Lochte a thank-you note for the wild goose chase on which he led police, the U.S. Olympic Committee and the media, taking away the focus on the games and Paralympic financial crisis.

But then again Lochte’s faux robbery is just as real as Bach’s transformed favela on the hill.

One of the constants through the Rio Games was an overwhelming toxic stench around Olympic venues. By the end of the games it was hard to tell if the smell was coming from the filthy water around so many Olympic facilities or from their overflowing toilets.

Or from Bach’s latest spin.