Zika, drugs, and medals: The Rio Olympics thread

[alfred russel]

Sadly, the current olympics are probably very close to an all drug olympics, at least in some sports.

[celedhring]

Don't anti-doping authorities keep the samples for like 8 years in anticipation of sportsmen taking drugs they can't yet detect?

[CountDeMoney]

WorldViews
'Please fix my toilet': Olympic teams suffer through problems at Rio's Athletes' Village
By Dom Phillips July 28 at 2:00 PM
Washington Post

RIO DE JANEIRO — The Summer Olympics are just days from opening, and organizers have been forced to mount a "massive operation" to fix a deluge of plumbing and electricity problems at the Athletes' Village in Rio.

It was the latest upset for an Olympics taking place amid a severe economic recession, a Zika epidemic, the impeachment process of suspended president Dilma Rousseff and a spike in crime in Rio state — which is so broke it needed a government bailout to pay police salaries in arrears.

The latest crisis began on Sunday, when the Australian team said its building in the Athletes' Village was uninhabitable because of problems with plumbing and electricity.

Now, with those issues resolved, the Australians have moved in. But other teams have complained about conditions in many of their apartments. The Argentine committee said that two of the five floors of its building were uninhabitable, and it had to rent apartments nearby for some of its technical staff. The Belarus Olympic committee published photos of dirty windows and blocked drains on its official page. Egyptian athletes had no hot water and their toilets did not flush, while a Kenyan wrote "Please fix my toilet" on a notice board in the Olympic Village.

A squad of 600 plumbers and electricians has been scrambling to repair everything.

"It is a massive operation and a massive undertaking to fix everything in such a way that we don't disturb the athletes and we don't compromise the security," Mario Andrada, Rio 2016's communications director, told The Washington Post. The operation was on course to finish by Thursday night, he said.

But even that operation has run into trouble.

On Wednesday, officials from Brazil's Ministry of Work inspected laborers' conditions and found the emergency team had been contracted informally, without the proper documentation. Fines could be levied if the subcontractors who hired the workers don't produce the necessary documents, the ministry said in a statement published on its website.

A spokeswoman for Rio 2016, speaking on condition of anonymity because of internal regulations, said organizers had presented the necessary documentation to the ministry.

But questions remain: How bad were the problems, and why wasn't the village ready when athletes began moving in on Sunday?

On July 26, TV Globo's nightly news program, Jornal Nacional, said one company contracted to fix the issues found problems in 57 out of the 272 apartments it was working on, including a lack of power and showers that did not work.

Filmed in shadow, an unidentified engineer working there said he believed the defects stemmed from the construction of the complex, built by a real estate consortium with plans to eventually sell the units. Rio 2016 is renting the complex of 3,604 apartments from Ilha Pura.

"I believe they had deadlines. They had to deliver the works on the date, and they delivered it the way it was," the engineer said.

Ilha Pura, or Pure Island, the real estate developer that built the complex, said the company had delivered the apartments in pristine condition.

"The construction work was 100 percent finished," a spokeswoman said in an email. "No kind of structural problem was found." She spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing internal regulations.

Ilha Pura supplied technical teams to help finish the work, the spokeswoman said, and its priority was to offer athletes "the best hospitality infrastructure."

That was not what the Australian team found when it conducted a "stress test" of the apartments on Saturday — turning on toilets and taps on several floors at the same time.

"The system failed. Water came down walls, there was a strong smell of gas in some apartments and there was 'shorting' in the electrical wiring," delegation chief Kitty Chiller said in a statement. "In our mind, our building is not habitable," she later told reporters.

Andrada, the spokesman for Rio 2016, said the complex had been turned over to organizers at the end of May but water and electricity were connected in June.

"The main cause for the delay was that water and electricity were connected too late" and there was no time to check the units before they were handed to the national Olympic committees, he said.

Andrada said it was not clear whose fault that was.

"Ilha Pura could maybe have delivered some of the apartments in better condition," he said. "We should have done better testing. But we are not discussing this now."

"Now the focus is on the resolution of the problem, not the cause of the problem," he said.

On Wednesday evening, some athletes described the problems they found. Shimaa Hashad, a member of the Egyptian shooting team, had no hot water when she arrived at her apartment earlier that day, and her toilet did not flush. "We told them and they fixed it," she said. "My friends from other countries told me about the same problems."

The Dutch team brought two technicians of its own after facing similar issues at Olympic Villages in London and in the Russian city of Sochi. But Rio was worse, said spokesman John van Vliet. Dutch field hockey player Mink Van Der Weerden said those efforts meant his apartment was in good condition when he arrived.

"They did a bit of work," he said. "And now it's all good."

Kiton Muca, an administration assistant for the Albanian team, said its members had faced some small issues on arriving, such as toilets that didn't flush, but these had been resolved. "For each Olympic Games, this is the situation," he said. Rio is his third.

Others faced more serious issues. The Argentine Olympic committee rented apartments in a nearby condominium for some of its technical staff because two of the five floors were "uninhabitable", its president, Gerardo Werthein, told reporters in Buenos Aires on Monday.

"It was very bad but it is being repaired," Eduardo Moyano, the team's communications director, told the Post, adding that the problems would probably be resolved in two or three days.

[DGuller]

So, the final outcome of Russia's doping thing:  Russia isn't banned, but the whistleblower is.  As I said in another thread,

[Liep]

So, the final outcome of Russia's doping thing:  Russia isn't banned, but the whistleblower is.  As I said in another thread,

If Putin can rig the American presidential election surely it's not surprising that he can control IOC.

[jimmy olsen]

The water the athletes will swim in is inundated with raw sewage and teaming with bacteria and viruses.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-water-pollution-virus-risk-danger-swimming-sailing-rowing-chance-of-infection-almost-a7165866.html

[dps]

The water the athletes will swim in is inundated with raw sewage and teaming with bacteria and viruses.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-water-pollution-virus-risk-danger-swimming-sailing-rowing-chance-of-infection-almost-a7165866.html

Yeah, this has been reported routinely over the last 2 years or so.

[CountDeMoney]

Timmay's been inundating Languish with raw sewage for a hell of a lot longer than that.

[Brazen]

Is there any bit of inhabited coastline that isn't affected by bacteria, viruses and raw sewage? I mean, think of all the fish that pee in it!

[lustindarkness]

Timmay's been inundating Languish with raw sewage for a hell of a lot longer than that.

His sewage is not raw, it has been treated by his editorials.

[Liep]

It's somewhat odd to see the high energy Olympic intro montage for television only to afterwards go to a wide shot of an almost empty stadium filled with players who aren't good enough for the national team and not important enough for their club team.

Strongest, fastest, whatever, just take out Football from the Olympics, it doesn't make any sense to have it in.

[sbr]

Yep.  if there is a larger/more important competition in your sport than the Olympics, you shouldn't be in the Olympics. 

Sorry baseball, basketball, golf, soccer.  Maybe cycling but who really cares about that?

[mongers]

A Russian diplomat or someone armed with him, takes out a would-be mugger near the Olympics venue.

[CountDeMoney]

A Russian diplomat or someone armed with him, takes out a would-be mugger near the Olympics venue.

Fuck, those Ukrainian journalists really do have it rough.  Even the sports reporters aren't safe.

[The Larch]

Yep.  if there is a larger/more important competition in your sport than the Olympics, you shouldn't be in the Olympics. 

Sorry baseball, basketball, golf, soccer.  Maybe cycling but who really cares about that?

It's funny how that only happens with footie, even NBA players have been going to the Olympics for 20+ years and there hasn't been any movement to go back to the pre-90s time when only college players would go, i'd say that Olympic basketball is roughly on par with the World Championship or even slightly ahead. Yet olympic footie is terribly terribly watered down, and it's not going to improve (with an European championship and a Copa América in the same summer there's simply no way that teams will send even their best U-23 teams).