Just a shift in gears for a moment; how in the world, did the IOC sign off on holding the Olympics in Rio after all the hard core quality of life/health issues athletes are now facing? In spite of countless allegations of corruption, am still bewildered. How could the IOC not know how bad conditions would be?
Realize I was not paying attention earlier in the process, but can not figure out how we traveled so far down this road....the 2022 World Cup by FIFA. When it comes to corruption, FIFA makes the IOC look like Boy Scouts.
The World Cup will be held during June and July. This June, high temperatures for the month ranged from 102 to 118. Try playing soccer under those conditions.
http://www.accuweather.com/en/qa/doha/271669/june-weather/271669
...There will be calls for it to be awarded to another nation. Valid calls.
The problem therein is that Qatar has already been building stadia for months. To pull the competition from Qatar at this point, while unquestionably correct from a moral standpoint, will have some fairly far reaching effects. Finding another country to host the World Cup would be as close to trivial as such an undertaking could possibly be; there's 10 countries in Europe alone who could host at the drop of a hat, but to pull the plug on Qatar after so much money has been invested already will no doubt result in countless legal battles - and I'm fairly sure FIFA has had enough of those for the time being.
Also, let's not forget where the 2018 World Cup is scheduled to take place; Russia.
The World Cup is going to be tumultuous for the foreseeable future, to say the least.
And then Zika virus surfaced. I think that that's largely what turned the spotlights on Rio, very late in the game.
The infrastructure problems were rushed and shortcuttec trying to fulfill a promise to get everything ready. Bad promise, but probably made more or less in good faith.
...its economy was booming, so they had a lot of money with which to bribe the IOC, lol.
Brazil also held the 2009 National University Games a few months before the 2016 Olympics were awarded. They demonstrated they were capable of holding such a large sporting event.
Such a dramatic turn around!