News & Features » June 2016 » “Dispatch From Rio: The Muted Olympic Hype Is Deafening” by Dave Zirin

“Dispatch From Rio: The Muted Olympic Hype Is Deafening” by Dave Zirin

This month marks the release of Fair Play: How LGBT Athletes Are Claiming Their Rightful Place in Sports by Cyd Zeigler, the second release from Akashic’s Edge of Sports imprint after Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian by Anthony Ervin and Constantine Markides. Today we’re pleased to share a piece by Edge of Sports imprint curator Dave Zirin on the upcoming Rio Olympics, originally published at his blog on May 11, 2016. Click here to read the original piece.

Dispatch From Rio: The Muted Olympic Hype Is Deafening
by Dave Zirin

The first thing you notice is nothing, and the nothingness speaks volumes. Upon landing at Rio’s International Airport, you see no indication that we are down to 86 days until the start of the 2016 Summer Olympics. My “sports beat” for the last decade sent me to most of these Olympic and World Cup sites to see what is happening before the games begin, before the cameras are rolled out, and before the IOC/FIFA propaganda machines are operating at full blast.

Yet no matter the country, no matter the hemisphere, there are commonalities to every Olympic or World Cup locale and it always starts at the airport. That’s where you are first assaulted with bright banners festooned with the logos of corporate sponsors. It follows you onto public transportation, where you are reminded that this town is going to be the backdrop for the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. When you go to any area where tourists congregate, you see the informal economy in full gear, attaching itself to these events to pull some crumbs off of the table: the knockoff T-shirts, bobbleheads, and Teddy bears. Yet in Rio, nothing. When I was here more than a year before the World Cup, the “official vodka of FIFA” (whatever that was) already had its own billboard roughly the size of the Cristo. But less than three months before the Summer Games? Crickets.

Even at the local Olympics ground zero, Praca Maura (Port Maura), where big screens will be erected for people to gather collectively to watch horse dressage or whatever event is underway, there’s no bunting, no ribbons, no souvenirs. For Rio, a place that has never been accused of subtlety, the Olympic yawn is stunning, especially in contrast to the raucous parties in 2009 that greeted the announcement that they would be the first South American country to host. Of course, much has changed since then. The country is no longer in an economic boom and the president, Dilma Rousseff, is involved in an impeachment scandal that makes House of Cards look like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.

This has undoubtedly taken some of the air out of the balloon. Reuters had a report positing that Olympic promotion was “a victim of the country’s political crisis.” For example, “Embratur, the government tourism department responsible for promoting the Olympics overseas, has had three leaders in 30 days, as consecutive parties abandoned Rousseff, derailing efforts to press ahead with the campaign.”

This is no doubt contributing to the lack of bright signage. Yet there is another reason, locals have mentioned to me: fear that the Olympics are so unpopular in Rio that any official hype would lead to graffiti and street art lampooning their presence. This kind of snarky political protest art—and I use “snarky” as a term of terrific praise—was widespread during the 2014 World Cup. It is possible that fear of the pushback against smiley, happy political murals is as much of an issue as anything else. Yet whether it is government paralysis or fear of mockery, the end result is the same. Rio is keeping its Olympic pep rally on the down-low. If only the displacement and militarization preceding the games were as equally low-key. But just the hype is muted. The pain, not so much.

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DAVE ZIRIN is the sports editor for the Nation magazine. He is the host of Sirius XM Radio’s popular weekly show, Edge of Sports Radio. He also cohosts the radio program The Collision: Sports and Politics, alongside Etan Thomas. Zirin is the author of eight books on the politics of sports, most recently Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics & the Fight for Democracy. He is the recipient of a 2015 New York Press Club Award for Journalism in sportswriting. 

Posted: Jun 28, 2016

Category: Akashic Insider | Tags: Anthony Ervin, Chasing Water, Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian, Constantine Markides, Cyd Zeigler, Dave Zirin, Edge of Sports, Fair Play, Fair Play: How LGBT Athletes Are Claiming Their Rightful Place in Sports, Olympics, Rio, Rio de Janeiro, sports