It takes almost an hour of walking through Inhauma before I see the Olympic rings: a small sticker in the window of the local school that you would scarcely notice otherwise. Dusk is falling and classes have long since been dismissed. Instead, all the kids are hanging out in the town square, the Praca Vinte e Quatro de Outubro. Some outdoor fitness equipment has been installed there: about half a dozen bright green weights machines of various shapes and sizes. The kids sit on them, motionless, playing with their mobile phones.

There is nothing particularly special about Inhauma, which is pretty much the reason I decided to go there. It is about half an hour north of central Rio de Janeiro on the metro: a straggly, monochrome cluster of unkempt streets, rusty chained gates, dilapidated churches and barking dogs. Graffiti on a concrete wall reads: “Se deus e por nos, quem sera contra nos?” It means: “If God is for us, who is against us?”