The Highs and Lows of the Rio Olympics
WARD: Welcome back to the program. Well, it was a dance party like no other as Rio said goodbye to the Olympic Games on Sunday, with the Maracana Stadium turning into a street carnival after 16 days of action. It was the games of magic and mayhem, from punch-ups at petrol stations and stripteases protest to Triple Crown champions and smashed world records. But what kind of long-term impact will the games have? Well, joining me now to discuss this is sportswriter David Goldblatt whose new book, "The Games of Global History of the Olympics" traces every aspect of the world's biggest sporting event.</s>WARD: David Goldblatt, thank you so much for being with us. I guess to begin with, if you had to say in a nutshell, what distinguished these Rio Olympics from previous games?</s>DAVID GOLDBLATT, SPORTS WRITER: Oh, the sheer scale and complexity of the problems that it tried to deal with. The fact that, you know, Brazil is a democracy and therefore all of its faults were aired incredibly widely. And I think that the Rio Olympics are going to be remembered for the moment when people seriously began to question whether the claims of the Olympic movement and its hosts to leave legacies and be economically beneficial really cannot caught the eyes anymore.</s>WARD: And what do you mean by that, exactly? In what sense?</s>GOLDBLATT: Well, let's look at, you know -- let's take the case of Rio somewhere in the region of $10 billion has been spent? And what does it actually been spent on? An Olympic village that will be turned into a gated community for high-end consumers. You know, a golf course that is a real estate scam for selling condominiums. A new metro that takes rich people from Ipanema to rich people in Barra, while the vast majority of the city who desperately need new public transport in the Zona Norte are getting absolutely nothing. I failed to see what the long-term infrastructural legacy is for the people of Rio as a whole. The contractors, of course, have done fabulously well.</s>WARD: So when you -- do you look at this as a general problem with the Olympics or as something specific to Rio? Is there an issue with the legacy that Games leave behind in developing countries?</s>GOLDBLATT: Absolutely. This is a problem with the Games as a whole. Brazil has given its own particular twist. But, you know, the same kind of problems that we see at Rio, you know, we saw them in Athens. We see them at Beijing. We saw them -- Sochi was more corrupt. Atlanta scrubbed the city center of the poor more thoroughly. Athens left more white elephants. The problem is not just Brazil, it is the entire model of hosting the Olympic Games.</s>WARD: On a lighter note, what did you take away as a high note of the Games?</s>GOLDBLATT: Rafaela Silva, the woman from the judoka, from the favela scoring Brazil's gold medal was a pretty extraordinary moment.</s>WARD: And a low note?</s>GOLDBLATT: Oh, the booing by the Brazilian crowd of the poor French pole vaulter, not merely in the competition, but when he got up to take his silver medal.</s>WARD: So what do you think going forward, given some of the issues that you've highlighted for us, what do you think needs to change in the Olympic system? Can there be a reform?</s>GOLDBLATT: The composition of the International Olympic Committee needs to change. You know, the people who are actually making the decision clearly have absolutely no conception about how to judge the probacy or quality of Olympic bids. I mean, anyone who would read Rio's bid document and believe that they were going to clear up 85 percent of the city's sewage given their track record beforehand really cannot be taken seriously as a judge of these things. We need to make it cheaper. There need to be less sports. There needs to be, you know, a commitment to really raising the level of sporting participation and host cities demonstrating that they can do that rather than choosing iconic architecture. Perhaps above all, we need to think about hosting the Olympics in more than just one city so that we can spread the pain and the joy.</s>WARD: But there are these seminal moments during every Olympic Games. I mean, what was your take away when you look at this Ethiopian runner, for example, sort of holding his hands up in this gesture of defiance as he crossed the finish line? There is a sense that politics and sports, it all kind of overlaps in the Olympics.</s>GOLDBLATT: Of course. I mean, the politics and sports overlap which is why we need to think about this politically in terms of who is actually benefiting from these things and what the trade-off between extraordinary sporting and athletic moments. And I absolutely recognize the value and the place for those, but one has to ask, you know, what do 72,000 people in Rio, who were displaced to make this Games happen think about it? What do the cleaners who are not being paid while doing 15-hour shifts think about it? What do the people who volunteered and didn't get meals think about it? There is a cost to staging these things, and we need to respect the people who host it. The people who are really paying the price and make sure they get a good deal as well.</s>WARD: Last question, just quickly. You spent an entire career covering the Olympics. What is so special about the Olympics?</s>GOLDBLATT: Nothing. You know, we live in a fragmented, but globalize world. We have a very rare opportunity to actually look at ourselves as global humanity in all its diversity and complexity. We need those moments. And most extraordinarily, you know, the Olympics does it through a normal linguistic form through sport. Very little else can capture so much of the planet and bring it together. Quite what we show and what we learn about ourselves in the process is another matter.</s>WARD: And I would be remiss if I didn't ask you on that note, the Paralympics poised to be something of a disaster this year. Only 12 percent of tickets sold. What's going on there? What's happened?</s>GOLDBLATT: Well, I think you've got a situation where -- you know, the reason why London 2012 was so fantastically successful in the Paralympics is, you know, you would have 20, 25 years of disability politics and disability Paralympics sport in this country pressing the case, changing attitudes. So that when the Games were held here, you had a very receptive public, a fantastically receptive media, brilliant organizers. And Brazil's disability politics and attitude to disability are in a very different place from where we were in London in 2012.</s>WARD: Indeed. David Goldblatt, thank you so much for being on the program with us.</s>GOLDBLATT: Thank you for having me.</s>WARD: Well, coming up, we imagine a forest that offers a glimpse into the past of Europe. Poland's primeval woodland is a vision of what the world once was. But is its future under threat? Find out after this.