São Paulo is the largest thành phố in Brazil, the largest thành phố in the Americas and the 4th largest city in the world, with almost 13 million inhabitants. During its history, São Paulo hosted major events, whether sports or not, or competed for some event. Of these events, what is missing khổng lồ close this list, are the Olympic Games.At the Rio năm 2016 Olympic Games, São Paulo was one of the soccer sub-venues, receiving 10 matches, but not something grandiose.São Paulo has hosted the 1963 Pan American Games, the 2002 South American Games, the 2014 Parapan American Youth Games, as well as the games of the 1950 World Cup, the 2014 World Cup and the 2019 America Cup. And every year, it receives the World-wide one of Formula 1. The thành phố applied lớn host the 2012 Summer Olympics, losing lớn Rio de Janeiro, which lost khổng lồ London & Expo 2020, losing to Dubai.
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The thành phố of São Paulo is a major economic, industrial and tourism hub in Brazil, receiving 11.7 million tourists in 2010 according khổng lồ the Municipal Tourism Department. With the Olympics, that number would double or even triple. In the lodging, the đô thị counts on about 50,000 rooms of hotels. In addition, there are 280 movie theaters, 180 theaters, 110 museums, 90 cultural centers, 55 shopping centers, more than 12,000 restaurants, ranging from local cuisine to lớn thai cuisine.
São Paulo has numerous portal cards, such as parks, museums, avenues, among others. Ibirapuera Park is the largest park in the city, và is a meeting point for people of all ages who enjoy their lawns, museums và hiking trails. Paulista Avenue is Brazil"s most famous avenue, bringing together companies, museums, shopping malls, subway stations, & is the meeting point of many people, especially young people. The São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) is located on Avenida Paulista, with paintings by artists such as Renoir & Van Gogh, as well as sculptures & other objects from Ancient Greece. The Altino Arantes Building is one of the highest in the city, known as "Empire States Paulista", with exhibition halls, skating rink, cafeteria & an observatory. The 25 de Março Street is the main street of popular commerce, with small shops that sell everything a little. The Municipal Market is considered to lớn be the trang chủ of the best ingredients, with bars and stalls selling mostly fruits, ranging from a simple hãng apple to the exotic pitaya.
A large mesh of transport facilitates the movement. They pass through the city, 11 state và federal highways. More than 200 bus lines connect all areas of the city. With 6 subway lines in operation, 3 more in construction, 7 suburban train lines linking São Paulo to lớn neighboring cities, makes the city the largest and best public transportation network in Brazil, & one of the best & largest in the world. The đô thị has 3 airports (São Paulo-Guarulhos, São Paulo-Congonhas & Campo de Marte), making São Paulo connect with the rest of the world. Three more road terminals complete this system.
The thành phố has large sports centers such as stadiums, gymnasiums and other places that can be adapted, such as convention centers. Some vì not even need lớn be renovated because they are new facilities, such as the Corinthians Arena, the Palmeiras Arena và the Paralympic Center.
These are just a few details, a summary of all the potential that São Paulo has to receive the Olympic Games, và who knows in 2032. Brazilian authorities have not launched an interest in hosting the event so far, but who knows soon. It"s not hard khổng lồ dream.
Is that you? What bởi you think of this future candidacy? vày you think São Paulo has the potential to vì chưng so? Can São Paulo become a candidate for 2032?
After The FlameThe năm 2016 Summer Games were supposed to lớn bring Rio & Brazil lớn new financial and athletic heights. What"s left behind? A city and country shrouded by corruption, debt and broken promises.
This story is also available in Spanish and Portuguese.
Felipe Wu opens the door, apologizing for the mess. On the floor beside him sits a suitcase overstuffed with clothes. A few feet away, boxes filled with pistols và ammunition climb the stairs. There are shoes in the kitchen. Boxes in the living room. A hole in the wall where the air conditioner once sat. It is a home in disarray. A family that is about lớn move.
The modest 860-square-foot trang chủ sits on a narrow street in the swanky Itaim Bibi neighborhood of São Paulo, the sprawling economic capital of Brazil. It stands in stark contrast to the tall, opulent buildings that line some of the city"s richest streets. But in a few weeks, Wu will no longer call this place home. The small yard và garage where he trained to win Brazil"s first Olympic shooting medal since 1920 will soon become a construction site. The narrow corridor on the side yard where he hung his targets và chased his Olympic dream for 12 years will meet its final fate: a bulldozer.
Wu"s home and the others on the block are scheduled for demolition, soon to be replaced by a pair of towers filled with luxurious condos, lavish homes that one might think would come with bringing home one of the 19 Olympic medals Brazilians won in Rio a year ago. But the success has done little lớn improve Wu"s way of life. If anything, the Olympics have made it worse.
"What I"m living now I couldn"t imagine in my wildest dreams," says the 25-year-old Wu, who won the silver medal in the 10-meter air pistol event. "After reaching a good result, I felt a spark of hope. But it never materialized. It"s sad.
"We missed the opportunity lớn transform sports in Brazil, to grow all of the sports lớn a professional level & to engage children in sports, to build the next champions. It"s all so disappointing."
The năm nhâm thìn Rio Olympics were supposed lớn be the second of a one-two punch announcing Brazil"s arrival as a world power through dominance in sports. But in many ways, the opposite unfolded. Timed with an embarrassing political corruption scandal và the largest economic crisis in Brazil"s history, the hosting of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Games has resulted in a perfect storm of unfulfilled promises.
While 15 of the original 27 venues have hosted some sort of event since the Games, others sit largely abandoned, their decay và disrepair a constant reminder of what was meant to be. Even the iconic soccer stadium, the Maracanã, has been vandalized, and had its power shut off completely after amassing a $950,000 electric bill.Deodoro Olympic Park, long hailed by Brazilian politicians và Olympic proponents as a path to lớn upgrade one of Rio"s poorer neighborhoods, is shuttered. The community pool that was supposed lớn come out of the canoe slalom course was closed in December và has yet lớn re-open. Brazil"s Federal Court of audit (TCU) reported last week that another abandoned pool, at the Deodoro Aquatics Center, is now covered in bugs, mud and rodent feces. A Deodoro elevator once used to lift fans over a busy road now leads khổng lồ nowhere.
Ten miles away at the Olympic Park, things aren"t much better. Earlier this month a fire from a flying lantern torched the roof of the Rio velodrome, badly damaging its Siberian Pine track. After the Games, the thành phố solicited bids for private companies to run the park, but no one bid, leaving Brazil"s Ministry of sport with the task -- và expense. The maintenance alone will cost the government approximately $14 million this year. Rio"s new mayor, Marcelo Crivella, has scrapped plans to turn the handball arena into four public schools. Và the 31 towers that made up the athletes village, which were set lớn be transformed into luxury condos, now sit largely vacant.
Even some of the medals awarded khổng lồ the athletes have tarnished or cracked, with more than 10 percent of them sent back khổng lồ Brazil for repair. Rio officials blame poor handling by the athletes.
Almost a year since the Games closed, the Rio năm nhâm thìn Organizing Committee still owes $40 million to creditors. Bloomberg reported in April that the Olympic organizers were attempting lớn pay creditors with air conditioners, portable energy units & electrical cables. In July, the organizing committee asked the International Olympic Committee for help with its debt; the IOC said no.
Promises that the Olympics would modernize Rio và make its streets safer and favelas cleaner have also failed. According to Brazil"s Institute of Public Safety, street robberies are up 48 percent và deadly assaults by 21 percent, to the highest rates since 2009. In the first three months of 2017, violent crime spiked 26 percent compared with the same period in 2016. The state of Rio is still unable to lớn pay its teachers, hospital workers, police và other public employees on time, if at all. Many favelas still lack running water or proper sewage removal. "The promised legacy of the Olympics achieving a safe thành phố for all people was not delivered," Amnesty International wrote in its September 2016 post-Rio report. "Instead a legacy of human rights violations endures."
Largely overlooked through much of the post-Rio commotion are the Brazilian athletes. Not only the ones like Wu, who achieved the highest levels of success, but also the next generation. Sponsors have dried up. Elite coaches have fled the country. Training centers have closed. & athletes wonder how -- or even if -- they"re still going khổng lồ be able lớn compete.
In December 2009, two months after the IOC awarded Rio the năm nhâm thìn Games, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva walked into the country"s Olympic awards celebration two hours late. Wearing the same xanh tie with white, green and yellow stripes that he wore on that memorable day in Copenhagen, Denmark, he proudly received the Olympic Personality of the Year award for the role he played in bringing the first Olympic Games to lớn South America.
It was a complete change from two years earlier, when fans lustily booed Lula at the Maracanã Stadium during the opening ceremonies of the Pan-American Games. Now his popularity was soaring. That night, he chose not khổng lồ read the remarks prepared by his staff & instead patted himself on the back for 28 minutes and promised "the most organized Olympics in the world." He said the Games had the power to take a kid from the favela & forever change his life.
None of that could be done, Lula said, without the help of the business community -- not by signing successful athletes khổng lồ endorsement giao dịch but rather through financing the sporting structure in Brazil. Then that troubled boy could be made into an Olympic champion. The crowd roared.
In the months and years that followed, Lula"s proclamation was backed up with a seemingly endless stream of financial support, as the Brazilian government invested some $4 billion in Brazilian sports. The influx of cash continued after Lula"s term expired và he was replaced by Dilma Rousseff. More than 90 percent of the country"s amateur athletic budget came from the government. It was a crash course in buying Olympic medals, an attempt lớn build as many world-class athletes as possible before Rio. Wu was one of the many Brazilian athletes who benefited from the investments. He had practiced alone until 2015, when the shooting federation hired a respected international coach. His performance soared. He won gold at the 2015 Pan-American Games and a pair of World Cup titles in the lead-up lớn Rio before medaling on trang chủ soil.
It didn"t take long for the tap to shut off. "Operation oto Wash," which began as an investigation into money laundering at a gas station in the capital city of Brasilia, exploded into one of the largest bribery scandals in Brazilian history.
More than 200 high-level government officials would be investigated or indicted, including Lula himself, who last month had his assets frozen and was sentenced khổng lồ 9-½ years in prison after investigators found $5 billion in bribes. While Lula is expected to file an appeal, the probe is ongoing. Former Rio governor Sergio Cabral was arrested on suspicion of receiving millions in kickbacks and recently sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption & money laundering. & officials are reportedly investigating former Rio mayor Eduardo Paes on suspicion that he also accepted at least $5 million in payments for Olympic construction projects.
“I dreamt about the Olympic medal since I was 13 years old. I thought it would change my life, or at least my life would be easier. Nothing has changed. On the contrary, I"ve lost. A lot.”
- xuất hiện water swimmer Poliana Okimoto, who won bronze in RioCoupled with sagging oil revenues, the people"s lack of trust in government led Brazil into its worst recession in history. Ten days after the closing ceremonies, Rousseff was impeached, largely blamed for the country"s crisis. No segment of the government was immune from scandal, including sports leaders. Coaracy Nunes Filho, the president of the Aquatic Sports Federation, và two of his directors were arrested and charged with the misuse and misappropriation of $13 million in funds, for their own personal gain và by giving favorable contracts khổng lồ associates.
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Sensing a larger problem, the TCU launched an investigation into 10 sports entities, including Brazil"s Olympic Committee. Nine of the 10 were found to be misusing public funds. The only organization that wasn"t: the Brazilian Confederation of Sports for the Visually Impaired.
"In our audits, we found that the situation was very serious & there was a risk of losing money & the legacy that had been built in recent years," TCU secretary Ismar Barbosa Cruz told muabanvali.com.
Athletes who had been showered with opportunity in the lead-up to lớn Rio were now in the middle of a nightmare, a few with the Olympic medals around their necks. Wu, the grandson of Chinese immigrants who lives with his parents in São Paulo, was one example. After Rio, the contract of his Colombian coach wasn"t renewed, so he is back lớn practicing on his own. He failed lớn reach the final in any World Cup tournaments this year & worries the same might happen at the world championship later this month.
He still has the same lone sponsor he had before Rio -- Rifle, the Brazilian company that supplies him with his ammunition. But there"s nothing new. He lives off the $1,000 a month he receives from the Brazilian army for representing it in armed forces competitions & a $4,800 monthly stipend from the government, the latter he receives for being an Olympic medalist. His complaints are less about money than the lack of stability from the government, the Brazilian Olympic Committee và his own federation. He has cut back on his travel & competition schedule & redirected his attention lớn an entity that can give him a far more stable future: college. At the Federal University of ABC, Wu is studying aerospace engineering.
He is often recognized on the streets, people stopping him in airports or supermarkets lớn congratulate him và ask for a photo. But most have no idea what thể thao he practices; they just recognize his face as one of the Brazilian success stories from the Rio Games. The occasional fan selfie does little khổng lồ quell his frustration.
"Since I was 12 years old, I wanted to lớn win an Olympic medal, but I never allowed myself to think of what it would be lượt thích to win," he says. "If I would have imagined something, I would be even more disappointed."
When Ricardo Cintra gets up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, he is still amazed. Along the dark path lớn the kitchen, he sees the Olympic medal pinned lớn the wall in the living room và shakes his head in disbelief.
"I look and think, "Wow. It"s true. Poliana did it,"" he says.
Cintra is one of the few coaches in the world who have the privilege of having an Olympic medal in their home. That"s because he is the coach và husband of open water swimmer Poliana Okimoto, who won a bronze medal in Rio. Okimoto initially finished fourth in the 10K race, but the disqualification of second-place finisher Aurelie Muller after she impeded another swimmer at the finish bumped Okimoto to bronze & made her the first Brazilian female swimmer to win an Olympic medal.
Okimoto had a plan for success leading up to lớn the Rio Olympics. For four years, she was able to pay a team of professionals to lớn help her. A physical therapist, dryland trainer, psychologist và massage therapist were all on hand lớn help her reach her goal. Part of the expenses were paid thanks to lớn a $4,100 monthly payment she received from her sponsor, the Brazilian Postal Service
But just lượt thích with Wu, Okimoto"s competitive life is now filled with confusion. With every stroke, she feels the effects of the financial crisis & corruption scandal.
In September, her sponsorship contract ended & was not renewed. Now she pays her team using the $1,000 she receives from the army, her own $4,800 monthly government stipend and money she receives from her club team, Unisanta. (For contractual reasons, the club will not disclose Poliana"s compensation.) She still trains at the same 25-meter Esperia Club pool in São Paulo where she và her husband pay roughly $160 a month lớn be members. There is no competitive team at the club, meaning it"s perfectly normal for Okimoto khổng lồ train in one pool while elderly women take water aerobics classes in another.
To train at Unisanta, which is located in Santos, a coastal đô thị some 50 miles from São Paulo, Okimoto would have had khổng lồ move & share the pool with her biggest rival, Ana Marcela Cunha. It"s a situation neither of them wanted. This summer, Poliana didn"t even make the Brazilian world championship team, while Cunha won gold in the 25K, bronze in the 5K and tied for bronze in the 10K.
"I dreamt about the Olympic medal since I was 13 years old," Okimoto says. "I thought it would change my life, or at least my life would be easier. Nothing has changed. On the contrary, I"ve lost. A lot."
She still carries the memory of standing on that podium a year ago. Through the tears of the moment, she watched hundreds of fans cheer her name and wave the Brazilian flag. But today it"s bittersweet. At the Maria Lenk Trophy, the first national competition held after the Rio Games, Cintra asked organizers to announce that there was an Olympic medalist at the pool.
"It was a chance to remind the young people that there was a medalist there, that we should value the accomplishments of this Brazilian athlete," he says. "We go lớn competitions in the USA & they stop everything to lớn announce that there is a medalist in the stands. Everyone applauds."
He paused, thinking of everything that"s happened in the last year, & added, "How can I motivate Poliana khổng lồ continue until Tokyo 2020 if the only
It"s a fair question. Và perhaps no segment of Brazilian sports has been hit harder by the post-Olympic downturn than aquatics. For 26 years, the Brazilian Postal Service sponsored Brazil"s entire aquatics federation. But after Rio, that investment was slashed by 67 percent, from $5.2 million to lớn $1.7 million a year.
Earlier this year, the president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee, Carlos Arthur Nuzman, admitted that economic investment in Brazilian sports has recessed khổng lồ where it was in 2000, nine years before Brazil was even awarded the 2016 Games.
The postal service predicts it will close 2017 with an operating loss of $400 million. The postal workers union wanted to lớn slash its tư vấn of sports entirely but was talked out of it.
"If it was up khổng lồ them, we would
The aftermath of the Rio Games has left many Brazilian athletes worried about their competitive future. Mauro Pimentel for muabanvali.com
Rafaela Silva still has trouble getting out of the house to take a walk along one of Rio"s famed beaches or even go khổng lồ the mall. A year after she won Brazil"s first gold in Rio, the 25-year-old still isn"t used to the attention that has come along with her 57-kilogram victory in judo.
The cruel, racially driven messages that followed a disappointing performance in London 2012 led her khổng lồ almost quit the sport, but they have been replaced by words of encouragement & pride. Her social truyền thông media followers have jumped from 10,000 to lớn 307,000 in Instagram & she also has just over 72,000 Twitter followers. She trains at Institute Reacao, a nonprofit organization that promotes human development and social inclusion through sports. She is one of the children who benefited most from the project và has added a major sponsor in Nike. Though she won"t say how much her sponsorship is worth, she and the owner of the institute, former Olympic medalist Flavio Canto, charge $10,000 khổng lồ speak together.
She knows her reality is not the norm. "In Brazil, only the gold medal is really appreciated," Silva says. "The athletes who won silver, bronze or didn"t medal at all are having far more problems. These are the ones lớn think about."
Of the 19 medals Brazil won in Rio, only seven of them were gold, including men"s soccer and volleyball, sports that already had strong support in Brazil.
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"Before the Olympics, the crisis was already big, but the Olympics helped people forget about it for two weeks," Silva says. "Afterward, the athletes wanted to lớn celebrate their accomplishments, but the country was waking up in the middle of more & more scandals. The truyền thông turned quickly lớn political issues, the economic crisis, & the athletes lost sponsorships & attention. They"ve been forgotten."
Before the Games, Silva and her judo teammates decided they would equally divide the prize offered lớn Olympic medalists by the Brazilian Judo Confederation, an amount that totaled $166,000 for its one gold and two bronze medals. Instead of pocketing at least $55,000, Rafaela took home about $11,000.
"Of course I would like to have had more for the medal, but we thought it would be more fair to split between everyone," she says. "We all fight the same way. This money helped those who had no sponsor."
The help was needed after Rousseff"s replacement, Michel Temer, suspended certain stipend programs for six months -- blocking pay lớn medalists from national, continental & world championships while keeping Olympic medalist stipends intact. The chance khổng lồ apply for new stipends is slated khổng lồ restart in August; so, under the best-case scenario, athletes will begin receiving their funding again in December. Silva worries about the impact this will have on Brazilian sports in the run-up to lớn Tokyo.
"Everybody will want a good performance in 2020, but sports are no longer a priority," Silva says. "We understand the government had to lớn decrease the investment. How can you justify the expense of millions on sports when we have no hospitals?"
The "Seeds of Hope" plants have been held up in a local greenery with no rollout plan in sight. Courtesy Biovest
The Opening Ceremony in Brazil"s famed Maracanã was the most watched in Olympic history. More than 2.5 billion people from around the globe tuned in as 11,000 athletes marched on the stadium floor holding a cartridge of soil và a seed from a native Brazilian tree. The athletes placed the cartridges into mirrored towers. Olympic organizers called the procession "Seeds of Hope," explaining the containers would be planted as part of an Athlete"s Forest in the Deodoro neighborhood of Rio.
But now, just over a year later, there is perhaps no greater example of the Rio Games" complicated legacy. The seedlings sit in planting pots under a sheer đen canopy on a farm 100 kilometers from Rio. Prior to lớn last week, Marcelo de Carvalho Silva, the director of Biovert, the company responsible for the seeds, hadn"t heard from Olympic organizers in months. He had no idea what the plans were for the seeds, but he painstakingly watched over them for free, knowing what it would mean for his company -- và the country -- if something happened to lớn them.
That"s when the TCU, following up on the Olympic promises made for Rio, started asking questions. And then, sure enough, Olympic officials finally reached out. Twenty-four million seedlings were supposed lớn be planted to offset the environmental impact of the Games. But that has not happened. The trees that were part of Olympic Park are dying from a lack of irrigation & maintenance. The mayor blames the organizing committee; the organizing committee the government. And, as a result, there is a stalemate.
"The planting of the 12,000 seedlings in the park is only a memory of a beautiful image in the Opening Ceremony," the TCU report said. "The Rio năm nhâm thìn committee made a promise lớn the world và has now been linked, morally, to lớn this duty. To lớn not plant the seeds would cause significant damage lớn the country"s image."
The plan had been for the organizing committee to lớn stage some sort of ceremonial year-after sự kiện in August or September, with big-name athletes, celebrities và volunteers coming together khổng lồ celebrate this positive environmental piece of Brazil"s Olympic legacy. Nothing has been planned. Silva says if August or September were the goal, he would have needed lớn start preparing the new soil in April.
"There are still no guarantees there will be the financial resources needed for this," he says. "I don"t know if this is going to happen."
The organizing committee insists it has the budget lớn properly plant the seeds. The TCU keeps a watchful eye khổng lồ make sure promises are kept và money is spent wisely. But that is the problem in Brazil: How vị you invest in sport when everything else is falling apart? How do you pay khổng lồ plant a forest when you can"t pay the police? Where did the budgeted money go?
The promises made have become impossible to lớn fulfill, và yet the spin continues. Everything will happen as planned, they say. The venues will be used. The schools will be built. The seeds will be planted.
Brazilians, however, have learned khổng lồ know better.
"At another time or in another country, the Games might have been different, but not here and not now," says University of São Paulo professor và longtime Olympic analyst Katia Rubio. "We climbed that initial roller-coaster ramp và took that big dive, but, in the end, there was nothing else. It was a big boost that ultimately led khổng lồ nothing."
