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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most of us, when we\u2019re parked in front of the tube watching the Olympics and taking in all those glittering aerial shots of Olympic Park between commercial breaks, we let the craggy waterfront scene wash over us like a warm, salty wave off Copacabana Beach. Not H\u00E9lio Castroneves, a Brazilian by way of South Florida. No, he leans in. He squints. He searches: for the six-foot high grass and the vast asphalt esses that once snaked through it, for the rocket-like cars zipping around at breakneck speeds, for the immense Brazilian flags flapping in the grandstands. \u201CIt was &lt;em&gt;nice&lt;/em&gt;,\u201D he says. \u201CI have phenomenal memories of that place.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before this western outcropping of Rio de Janeiro was the global epicenter of sport, it was a racetrack\u2014Jacarepagu\u00E1. (Pronounced &lt;em&gt;jah-kah-RAI-pah-gwah&lt;/em&gt;, with the &lt;em&gt;R &lt;/em&gt;rolled for maximum effect.) And in its day Jacarepagu\u00E1 was the beating heart of a motorsports superpower, at once a withering road course and punishing trapezoid-shaped oval\u2014Brazil\u2019s answer to Indianapolis Motor Speedway. For Castroneves, it was home. And when he looks back on his experiences there, it\u2019s with the wistfulness of a man looking over the penciled wall etchings of his growth that linger on a family room wall. \u201CThat was where I raced my first go-karts,\u201D he says. \u201CAnd also my first Formula 3 race was there. I raced IndyCar there as well, in 1998, 1999 and 2000.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Castroneves, though you\u2019d never know it from his bubbly vibe, is IndyCar\u2019s second oldest pilot, a 41-year-old three-time Indianapolis 500 winner (in \u201901, \u201902 and \u201909) who\u2019s still running up front for the series\u2019 top dog\u2014 Team Penske. He lags nearly eight months behind the series\u2019 senior-most ace\u2014Tony Kanaan, another Miami-Dade based Brazilian who won the Indy 500 (in \u201913) and remains a force for Ganassi, a Penske nemesis. Like Castroneves, he buries his age under a mountain of positivity, and did a lot of growing up at Jacarepagu\u00E1, too. And now that it\u2019s gone, well, he\u2019s conflicted. \u201CYes, it\u2019s a terrible thing for motorsports,\u201D he says. \u201CBut think of the big picture, of what all of Brazil is getting with the Olympics.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For a start, there were the tens of billions of dollars\u2014the geopolitical equivalent of hitting the Powerball. And like a not insignificant number of big lotto winners Brazil has looked unlucky ever since. The economy collapsed. The president was impeached. Zika emerged as this day\u2019s bubonic plague. Baked-in issues of class and corruption became international talking points as the Games approached, the conversations only growing more intense with every report of half-built venues, untended bodies of water and unchecked crime. The idea that Rio had lucked into hosting duty was an irony too rich for Brazil\u2019s legion of first-world critics. They looked upon the mount, at that giant statue of Christ the Redeemer, and braced for the Rapture. \u201CIt just built up these really bad expectations,\u201D Castroneves says, \u201Clike Brazil is gonna blow it.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So what if it was a fairly tired Olympic dirge, that its chorus gets sung &lt;em&gt;every &lt;/em&gt;two years\u2014that Brazil&amp;nbsp;has always swayed to its own frenetic beat. \u201CI told a lot of people it\u2019s going to be \u2026 &lt;em &gt;chaotic&lt;/em&gt;,\u201D says Castroneves.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Says Kanaan: \u201CWe call it The Brazilian Way. It\u2019s hard, man. It\u2019s hard when people don\u2019t get paid. It\u2019s hard when, in Rio, forty percent of that town lives in cartoon houses, and the others live inside the favelas. It\u2019s hard when you have a cop that makes, I don\u2019t know, not even $20,000 a year and a drug trafficker offers him $50,000 to turn his head away. I want critics to put themselves in those shoes. It\u2019s not the people that are corrupt. It\u2019s the &lt;em&gt;mentality. &lt;/em&gt;It isn\u2019t worse because we\u2019re hosting the Olympics.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It isn\u2019t karmic payback for building the Games atop sacred racing ground, either.\r\n\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set upon a marshy inlet, Jacarepagu\u00E1 was a quintessentially Brazilian works project. They started building it in 1971, abandoned construction for a stretch when the budget ran dry, then picked their hard hats up again and finished the job just before the end of the decade. It was just in time. Interlagos, the country\u2019s premier circuit, had proven too perilous for its showcase event\u2014Formula 1 racing. One of the series\u2019 biggest stars, a Rio boy named Nelson Piquet, had emerged at a time when star drivers shot from the Brazil soil like so much sugar cane. The little &lt;em&gt;bandeira &lt;/em&gt;that would appear next to a driver\u2019s chryoned name was practically, says Castroneves, \u201Ca business card.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Castroneves was five, his father\u2014also named H\u00E9lio and a weekend track warrior\u2014used to dress him up in a firesuit and helmet, stuff him in the trunk and smuggle him onto pit lane. By age 10 he was lapping the Jacarepagu\u00E1 road course. After a winding trip through Europe on the Formula ladder, he returned in 1998 to race at Jacarepagu\u00E1\u2014which, by then, had been renamed for Piquet\u2014in front of a home crowd that was so hungry for American open wheel racing that they built an oval on top of the road course.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kanaan, who also got his start at Rio as a go-kart racer, started third on the grid that day, with Castroneves and six other Brazilians behind him. In that moment, Kanaan knew what it felt like to be not just any racing idol but the late Ayrton Senna, the track god turned national hero who favored Kanaan with a most incredible blessing. \u201CIt was like, &lt;em&gt;whoa\u2026I made it&lt;/em&gt;,\u201D he says. \u201CHaving the entire racetrack, with all the fans cheering for you, that was a very, very unique experience that I will never forget.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, it was not to last. All but one native son, Maur\u00EDcio Gugelmin, completed the race. By 2001 IndyCar stopped running there altogether. Apart from a handful of dates, the series hasn\u2019t really turned laps in Brazil since. Plans to open the 2015 season in Bras\u00EDlia fell through when the government pulled funding at the last minute. By then, it was too late to detour to Rio. After Formula One abandoned Jacarepagu\u00E1 following the \u201989 Grand Prix for Interlagos (again), after just 10 F1 races, the track became a mostly empty preserve, then an eye sore\u2014then a giant platform for the world\u2019s largest sporting event. So it was razed in 2012, along with a chunk of the favela hard by the oval\u2019s first turn, in the name of progress. For Castroneves and Kanaan, it\u2019s been quite a trip.\r\n\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unable to travel back for the Games due to a raft of team and sponsorship commitments, the boys from Brazil can only look on from afar. They live through family and friends who are much closer to the action. Kanaan, between his nine-year-old son Leo (who\u2019s attending many events live) and his brother-in-law (who\u2019s sending back the behind-the-scenes video he puts together for his production company), feels as immersed as one can without actually being in Rio. When the Games finally kicked off with last week\u2019s Opening Ceremonies, \u201CI was biting my nails,\u201D says Castroneves. \u201CI didn\u2019t know what to expect.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Neither did Kanaan. But then he talked to his mom, a retiree who lives in Rio. After the Opening Ceremonies, her neighbor reached out asking if she\u2019d be willing to rent out her place to a pair of European couples who couldn\u2019t find a hotel in town. \u201C&lt;em&gt;Ehhh&lt;/em&gt;, if it\u2019s for the right money,\u201D she said.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CShe\u2019s in S\u00E3o Paulo with my sister now,\u201D Kanaan says.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In other words nothing\u2019s happened that doesn\u2019t always happen during the Games: People are still coming in droves and spending money like drunks. Sure, there are plenty of unresolved local issues.&amp;nbsp;Crime is literally breaching the media bubble, protests rage on the periphery of the Games, and water pollution\u2014already a clear (ahem) and present danger to Copacabana Beach goers\u2014has spread to the indoor facilities. Lord knows what will become of Olympic Park in four years' time. But, hey, this is simply the Brazilian Way, what sportocrats get for sticking a crown jewel sporting event in a country teetering on the brink. What\u2019s more, Kanaan notes, \u201CZika just arrived in America. So, now &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt;.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;No matter the levels of dysfunction, it seems, the Games rise above all because the Games are damn good entertainment, overwhelming in every sense. \u201CThere are &lt;em&gt;so &lt;/em&gt;many sports,\u201D says Castroneves, who passed on an invitation to carry the Olympic torch through his hometown of Ribeir\u00E3o Preto because it came during the month of May. \u201COne night I was flipping channels and watched Ping-Pong. The Brazilians, they actually won! In gymnastics there was a lady, 41 years old, and she\u2019s competing. How cool is that?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThat fascinates me, to see people so focused: the team of refugees, the judoka from here, South Florida, who lost and was obviously upset afterward. But then she\u2019s like, \u2018I\u2019m gonna wait four years to go again.\u2019 &lt;em&gt;Four years. &lt;/em&gt;My god, that\u2019s crazy! I can\u2019t even wait a year to race the Indy 500 again.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Kanaan, these Games have been a fun binge-watch, too. And still his thoughts turn to the one sports figure who should be in Rio but isn\u2019t. \u201CObviously Senna was the biggest supporter of athletes from Brazil,\u201D he says. \u201CEvery time he won races, he made sure he brought his flag. I mean, he &lt;em&gt;cared&lt;/em&gt; about his country. During the Opening Ceremonies, 100 percent in my mind I believe that if he was still alive he was gonna be the guy who was gonna light the torch. He may not be around, but he\u2019s still a very influential person in Brazil. I mean, I have no doubt that he would be &lt;em&gt;the &lt;/em&gt;man of the Olympics\u2014which is funny because racing is not even an Olympic sport.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many don\u2019t even consider it an &lt;em&gt;actual &lt;/em&gt;sport. Never mind that Castroneves and Kanaan train like triathletes year-round just to keep pace with their younger rivals. Or that they engage in true life-and-death competitions, a fact that rang true again with the sudden, recent passing of part-time Indy driver Bryan Clauson in a Sprint car crash. \u201CI\u2019ve been thinking about that, reflecting on that,\u201D says Castroneves. \u201CIf something bad happens, trust me, I prefer being on the racetrack than actually crossing the street.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sacrifice is the tie that binds the racing driver to the Olympics. Without it, we\u2019d not only be watching an altogether different spectacle. We\u2019d be missing the great lesson that Brazil has to teach us. \u201CI want people to understand that although with every adversity that we have there\u2014the poverty, everything\u2014we\u2019re still able to have fun,\u201D Kanaan says. \u201CI hope we send a message to the world that we can put something together despite how bad or good our lives are.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201COur people, they suffer so much that when they have time to enjoy themselves or to create something, even if it\u2019s for two hours or a day or a week, they have this capability of blocking off all the bad stuff and saying, &lt;em&gt;You know what? It\u2019s bad, but this is a chance that I can have fun for a minute and forget about everything that I have bad in my life and what\u2019s going on in my country&lt;/em&gt;. Let\u2019s enjoy it.\"\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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