As if the 2016 Rio Olympics needed any more bad press, it got plenty of it on Sunday. Just moments after the IOC decided against a full ban of all Russian athletes, the Australian Olympic team made it known they were not going to be staying in their allotted buildings in the Olympic Village.
The Australian Chef de Mission Kitty Chiller announced the team won’t be staying in the village due to conditions that were “not safe, not ready.”
Among the issues cited by Chiller were exposed wiring and cables, leaky ceilings, blocked toilets, inadequate lighting in already dark stairwells and dirty floors.
“Due to a variety of problems in the Village, including gas, electricity and plumbing I have decided that no Australian Team member will move into our allocated building,” Chiller said in a statement.
The team was supposed to have been in its housing for the Rio games on July 21st, but has been staying at a hotel close to the village in the hopes that the issues the team saw would be fixed in time for the games themselves.
It appears that won’t be the case, and perhaps that’s the least shocking news considering the issues the Rio organizing committee has had in getting construction of a lot of things complete in time for use at these games.
Locations like the tennis stadium, BMX course, aquatics center, velodrome, beach volleyball stands and the whitewater rafting stadium were far from complete less than three weeks ago and workers were rushing like crazy to try and catch up in the final weeks.
Adding in issues with housing on top of everything else, could this be the biggest disaster of a modern Olympic games?
[Yahoo]
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About Andrew Coppens
Andy is a contributor to The Comeback as well as Publisher of Big Ten site talking10. He also is a member of the FWAA and has been covering college sports since 2011. Andy is an avid soccer fan and runs the Celtic FC site The Celtic Bhoys. If he's not writing about sports, you can find him enjoying them in front of the TV with a good beer!