Five years after the Olympics in Rio: Nothing remains of the glamor of the Games

With the Olympic Games everything should change in Rio. But five years later, newly built stadiums are falling into disrepair, drug gangs are ruling the favelas again, and the city is worse off than before.

Five years ago, Rio de Janeiro was the last Olympic host. But in retrospect, little has remained of the games. The sports facilities that were newly built at the time lie fallow, the grandiose concepts and ideas for re-use have almost all vanished into thin air. For urban development, the games only provided selective impulses, most of the promises and hopes remained unfulfilled.

Five years after the Games, Rio’s Olympic Park is a concrete desert. The air billows over the huge asphalt surfaces. The halls and stadiums that were specially built for the games in the Barra de Tijuca district are falling into disrepair. The green spaces have dried up, in other places weeds grow from cracks in the concrete.

No interest in sustainable use

Only now and then do you meet skaters who appreciate the idle park. “We always skate here, we love this place. We’re here every day, we live nearby. But if you’re thirsty and want a drink, you can’t even buy water here,” says one of the skaters. You could open kiosks here, restaurants, that would be much better. “But they just want to build something and grab something for themselves. And then everything is left in this state,” says another skater.

For the people in Rio it is clear why the huge park – twice as big as the Olympic Park in Munich – lies fallow today. There were sophisticated concepts for re-use. Some of the halls were to be relocated and rebuilt in other locations. But in the end it was all about building expensive buildings for the games and making money from them. Ultimately, nobody was interested in sustainable use.

Everything was left to itself

“What you see here is the result of the state government that we have now. Everything is completely left to its own devices, the funds have all been embezzled, and these buildings that you see here are left for the population,” he said Skater. This is what it looks like in the parks, but that also applies to hospitals and education.

“Real 41 billion was invested in the Olympic Games, and then here in the Olympic Park in Barra, just like in the Olympic Park Deodoro and many halls, we can see that these places have been left to their own devices,” says Felipe Michel, chairman of the city council’s sports committee from Rio. For the Cariocas – the residents of Rio de Janeiro – it was sad, but the task of the Commission was to turn it back into an Olympic legacy.

“Rio is even more unequal than before the games”

For a few weeks, the Olympic Games gave the world the illusion of a modern, up-and-coming city, says Tarcisio Motta, who heads the left-wing PSOL parliamentary group on the city council. “We have halls here that are not being used, debts, corruption scandals and a city that is even more unequal than it was before the Olympics.” Ultimately, that is a burden that has been left to them. Everything has to be managed and maintained, although the buildings have brought nothing to the people of Rio.

In fact, the Games didn’t do too much for Rio. New roads, an express bus system and a subway line have been built, but they are not where the Cariocas urgently need them today.

Crime is back in the favelas

And in the end, attempts to reduce crime have also failed. Shortly after the games there was no more money for the special units of the police and the neighborhood guards. The drug gangs recaptured the favelas; today they share power and money with militias that are interwoven with the police.

Eduardo Paes, then and now again Mayor of Rio, tries to wash his tarnished reputation back and blames his political opponent, who ruled the metropolis for four years. Now, five years after the games, the promised new use of the sports facilities should finally be tackled. The aim is for the sports halls to become four schools.

“The city’s legacy exists. It has been treated badly because everything has been badly treated in recent years,” says Paes. “And we’re working very hard now to rewrite the end of this story.” But the Cariocas know these promises well enough – after all, they heard them before the 2016 Games.