With many Rio 2016 teams now on the ground for their final six weeks of training and practice, shit is getting real – too real. Worse yet, there’s really no help available when it all goes down. Consider this report from last week, sent in by a longtime Anarchist on the ground in Brazil (and remember, piracy ain’t nothing new in Brazil).



Two Team GBR Ribs were stolen overnight from Torben Grael’s Rio Yacht Club in Niteroi – the same club hit by stray bullets from a nearby gunfight a few weeks back. They were dragged to a beach in Jurujuba, not far from the US Team’s launching location.

The two British team coaches who lost the RIBs found them the next morning as they were being stripped. Already VHFs, fuel hoses, tanks, and wiring were already gone, with outboards next to go. The law-abiding GBR coaches’ immediate reaction was to threaten the thieves with calling the police.

“You think that will help you?” the head pirate said, with a big laugh. Considering the level of police corruption in Brazil, the British coaches were inclined to come up with another solution, which meant giving the pirates every dollar, pound, and real they had in both their wallets and backpacks.

One of the coaches surreptitiously snapped a pic of the pirates, and the Rio Yacht Club staff identified one of them as a top drug dealer in the nearby Jurujuba favela, and told the coach he was very, very lucky. If the Olympic fleets get away without losing any lives over the next two months, they’ll be very lucky indeed.

Title from a great band in a kinder, gentler world.

