Rio’s mayor at the time, Eduardo Paes, wrote a letter complaining of my calumnies and took offense at talk of corruption. Another year passed, and Brazilian prosecutors found Olympic corruption everywhere. An executive from a big construction firm testified that he had given $5 million in bribes to Paes. The former mayor denies those charges.

Calgary hired Ernst & Young to crunch its numbers. I sat in a council meeting as its sober gentlemen took us skipping through the numbers, all of which — miracle! — added up in favor of the bid.

I nosed about afterward on the internet and noticed that Ernst & Young had served as a richly compensated “exclusive provider” to the Rio Olympics. Previous Olympic cities, Ernst & Young noted in a news release, had seen arenas turn into white elephants. Not Rio, no no. “We have established sustainable postgame use for facilities” through a regimen of good governance and finance, the release said.

Two years later, Rio de Janeiro is stuck with a rumbling herd of white elephants, Olympic pools filled with rat feces, and a burned and collapsed velodrome and wrecked arenas. Officials have scrapped promises to turn Olympic handball courts into four public schools. As ESPN reported, the only one of the sports federations not found implicated in corruption was the Brazilian Confederation of Sports for the Visually Impaired.

You can only hope that Olympic and perhaps Ernst & Young officials had some fitful nights of sleep.

The I.O.C. has grown edgy at the lack of suitors seeking to host Games and proclaimed itself ready to shed the tux and don the hair shirt. It introduced a “Games changer” called the New Norm, which encourages construction of fewer new stadiums and would share more dollars with host cities.