The Rio Olympics are only days away, but yet disasters surrounding the upcoming games have been flooding in as heavy as the raw sewage for months. Kudos to Real Sports for launching a global journalistic investigation into the International Olympic Committee and all the sh** (literally) that’s gone down since Sochi.
Not only is human waste running through the streets of Rio, but has been for years while nothing has been done to fix it. Politicians promised the city would clean things up (along with the crime and healthcare) when they took the Olympics bid. Not even with thousands of Olympian athletes, officials, delegates and fans coming in from around the world, has anything been accomplished to help the people who live there.
Literally, there’s open sewage running from home toilets directly into the streets. And it’s not rare. It’s 30 percent of the city.
While some athletes will inevitably come into contact with the sewage, especially the swimmers, doctors are emphasizing, “don’t get sick.” The public hospitals look like something out of a disturbing scene from The Walking Dead.
Of course the Sochi winter Olympics just two years ago were completely unhinged as well. Yet, Russia still doesn’t want us to know how bad conditions actually were. In order to give a full-circle perspective on how destructive the Rio games could be, HBO attempted to go behind the scenes in Sochi … and got arrested.
Another Sochi video previewing HBO’s report is here.
Good work, fellas. Unfortunately, I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot more to uncover in the near future.
Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel airs exclusively on HBO.
Josh Helmuth is the editor of Crave Sports.
Photo: Getty
