When Rio de Janeiro bid to host the 2016 Olympics, it cited as a trump card the experience and infrastructure the city had gathered in hosting the 2007 Pan American Games. Opponents, however, pointed to Rio's broken promises from the 2007 event, like the metro lines and highways the city vowed to build but never did. Nevertheless, the International Olympic Committee overlooked those protests and decided the self-described "Marvelous City" would become the first South American venue to hold the world's biggest sporting event. Now, almost four years after that momentous decision, it looks increasingly like Rio's Pan Am experience was wanting. The Pan Am Games' Joao Havelange Stadium—now intended for the track-and-field competitions in the 2016 Olympics—has just been closed because it's in danger of collapse. The velodrome is about to be knocked down because it isn't up to Olympic standards. And a handful of other venues are being modernized or upgraded because they simply aren't good enough. "They said that one of the reasons the Pan American games were so over budget was because the installations were built to an Olympic standard and we can see now that is clearly not the case," said Alberto Murray, a former member of the Brazilian Olympic Committee and a critic of Rio's preparations. "What we are seeing is not new. It is something that has been getting worse over time." (MORE: Rio 2016: Track And Field Venue Closed Indefinitely) The closure of the track and field stadium comes at a sensitive moment for Rio, the former capital whose decades-long decline was arrested only recently thanks to the election of a progressive mayor and a flood of pre-Olympic (and oil and gas) investment. Over the weekend, a 21-year old American woman was gang-raped on a bus–a grim reminder that violence is never far from the surface in Brazil. Now, a scandal over shoddy workmanship on the stadium raises fresh questions over the city's suitability as Olympic host. The Joao Havelange arena is currently the city's main soccer stadium. Some of the huge metal(http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=world.time.com&blog=19871253&post=79299&subd=timeglobalspin&ref=&feed=1)
Via: TIME GlobalSpin