Article content continued

But, as the Games unfolded, there remained hope that organizers would still follow through on other legacy projects. Deodoro was — and technically still is — a big one, with plans to convert it to a park with public swimming facilities. At Olympic Park, one of the venues, not coincidentally named Future Arena, was to be deconstructed after the show had left town and turned into four schools. Instead, it is an empty handball arena.

“It will be dismantled,” an official told a public hearing this week, according to The Associated Press. “We are just waiting to know whether we will actually have resources to build these schools on other sites, or whether we dismantle it and wait for the resources to come.”

Photo by Buda Mendes / Getty

The local organizing committee reportedly owes creditors more than US$30 million and the state is bankrupt, so it is hard to imagine those resources suddenly materializing. Oh, and the Olympic Golf Course stopped having any maintenance work done because workers weren’t paid. There are reports that greenskeeping has resumed, but the course is still empty — a problem that probably could have been foreseen in a city where an estimated 0.025 per cent of the people are golfers. (In Canada, that number is around 19 per cent.)

Not following up on plans is one thing, but the context here is that many of these projects were cited as reasons for why Rio, a troubled city in a troubled country, should want to host such a costly spectacle as the Olympics. Schools, subways, parks, housing, clean water: all of these long-term gains would flow from the short-term spending that the Games would spark. Unless they didn’t. So far, they didn’t even spark the simpler things, like getting the odd Brazilian to take up golf.