Rio's "Olympic Legacy" Slumps Into A Sea Of Waste, Empty Buildings And Garbage - NYT
RIO DE JANEIRO — It is not uncommon for the Olympics to leave behind some unneeded facilities. Rio, however, is experiencing something exceptional: Less than six months after the Summer Games ended, the host city’s Olympic legacy is decaying rapidly.
Empty Olympic buildings abound, puncturing any uplifting buzz from the competitions last summer. At the Olympic Park, some stadium entrances are boarded up, and screws are scattered on the ground. The handball arena is barricaded with metal bars. The broadcast center remains half disassembled. The warm-up pool is decorated with piles of dirt and puddles. Deodoro, a neighborhood in Rio’s poor periphery, has the second-largest cluster of Olympic sites. The canoe slalom course was to be converted into a giant public swimming pool. It closed to the public in December. Today, residents fill plastic pools a few hundred feet away.
Maracanã Stadium, where the Rio Games’s opening and closing ceremonies were held, is now in shambles, with seats torn out and bare patches adorning the pitch.
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“It’s totally deserted,” said Vera Hickmann, 42, who was at the Olympic Park recently with her family. She lamented that although the area was open to the public, it lacked basic services. “I had to bring my son over to the plants to go to the bathroom,” she said.
At the athletes’ village, across the street from the park, the 31 towers were supposed to be sold as luxury condominiums after the Games, but fewer than 10 percent of the units have been sold. Across town at Maracanã Stadium, a soccer temple, the field is brown, and the electricity has been shut off. “The government didn’t have money to throw a party like that, and we’re the ones who have to sacrifice,” Ms. Hickmann said, referring to local taxpayers.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/sports/olympics/rio-stadiums-summer-games.html
The closed parking lot in front of the former athletes’ village. Credit Dado Galdieri for The New York Times
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/sports/olympics/rio-stadiums-summer-games.html