RIO DE JANEIRO – On Oct. 2, 2009, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio. An impromptu party broke out on Copacabana Beach here, the city government declared the day a holiday for workers, and Brazil’s then-president wept at the news that his country would be able to showcase itself on the global stage.

“Today is the most emotional day in my life, the most exciting day of my life,” then President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated. “Now, we are going to show the world we can be a great country.”

The Opening Ceremony of the Olympics is Friday, and, thus far, Brazil is not showing the world how great of a country it is or could be.

Like with most Olympic host nations, the billions of dollars spent on building and hosting these Games were sold to the public as a long-term investment designed to convince tourists it’s a place to visit and convince international business leaders in which to invest. It was especially important for Brazil, a still-developing nation and the first in South America to host the Games. Along with the 2014 World Cup, sports were seen as a national marketing vehicle.

[Related: Meet the fishermen of contaminated Guanabara Bay]

So far, however, it’s been an unmitigated disaster overwhelmed by pre-Olympic publicity focused on pollution, disease, corruption, traffic, poverty, infrastructure inefficiencies and general discord.

“If [hosting the Olympics were] about changing perceptions of Brazil it would appear to have backfired in a serious perceptual sense,” Mark Ritson, adjunct professor at Melbourne Business School in Australia and an international branding expert, told Yahoo Sports. “They have spent billions to confirm and even worsen the negative perceptions of Brazil to a global audience.”

View photos A polluted canal stands next to the Olympic Park. (Getty Images) More

Lula da Silva is no longer Brazil’s president, although he remains mired in a wide-raging corruption investigation concerning bribes paid out by construction companies, among other offenses, during his time in office. His successor, Dilma Rousseff, who served as his chief of staff, has been stripped of her powers as she undergoes impeachment proceedings that stem, in part, from the same pay-for-play scandal.

There remains global skepticism that Brazil won the bid process outright, since at the time of the vote IOC officials didn’t just explain away the obvious challenges of hosting the Games here, they pretended they didn’t exist. “There was absolutely no flaw in the bid,” then-IOC president Jacques Rogge comically declared. Sure, other than all the obvious flaws. The ongoing political sagas – internal and external – have done little to assure that Brazil is a place for fair business.

Rio and Brazil, as a whole, are broke, as billions spent on construction and operational costs drain coffers. There remain concerns over the spread of the Zika virus, which can cause birth defects. The waters around the city are so polluted with sewage and various viruses that athletes who must compete in them have been told not to open their mouths while swimming. Clearly, the government did little to no work on the sewage problems, despite seven years to work on them. Crime is rampant. Traffic can be soul-crushing. Poor construction standards are obvious. The pre-Games headlines around the world have been toxic.

That day in 2009 – celebrating the chance to redefine this city and country – seems a long, long time ago.

“They’ve gotten off to a bad start,” Jonathan Schroeder, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology with a focus on branding, told Yahoo Sports. “The general sense is they are failing to live up to international standards.”

As a microcosm there is Copacabana, the famed beach that hosted the initial bid-winning party with tens of thousands of people drinking and dancing to samba music in typical freewheeling Brazilian ways. It is the cultural and emotional center of the city.

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