“We all know how hard it is to find accommodations outside the villa at this point, and although Rio says they will be ready, we can not take any chances”.
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There is little chance the TCU report will result in any punishment for organizers as most of the spending for the games, which run from August 5 through August 21, was channeled through Rio de Janeiro’s state and municipal governments.
The Australian Olympic team is now staying in hotels until Olympic officials fix the problems with plumbing, gas, and electricity. “We are renting a number of apartments outside the villa and we will move the technical personnel and staff to privilege our athletes, so we can guarantee proper accommodations for our team”, he said.
Delays often occur in the final run-up to staging the Olympics, but Brazilian organizers have been embarrassed by a barrage of multiple problems as they prepare for South America’s first Games.
The 31-building village is expected to house 18,000 athletes and officials at the height of the games.
The Italian team also said some areas of the village were not ready and that they had been forced to hire workmen to carry out emergency repairs. Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States teams have reportedly paid for cleaning services.
New Zealand’s Olympic rowing champion Mahe Drysdale, who said he was the first athlete from any country to enter the village, added facilities were in need of a few “finishing touches”.
“I think having pressure put on the organizing committee, the NOCs worked together collaboratively and we went to OCOG with the IOC and said there are some issues, and we heard back ‘we want to help you and this is how will we help you, ‘ and that has been the aim of how this process has gone”, Chiller said to ATR.
Rio de Janeiro won the bid to host the 2016 Summer Games seven years ago, when few obstacles were apparent.
Now officials are facing a situation similar to what unfolded at the last Winter Olympics, in Sochi, Russia, in 2014, when lodging was not ready for the start of the games.
A spokesman for the British Olympic Committee said that it had been meeting daily with Rio officials “to find solutions to issues that have arisen in the village for the benefit of all delegations”.
A sign indicates the directions in the Olympic Village in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, July 23, 2016.
The Australians, however, are hoping to move athletes into the Village by tomorrow. “Whilst we have encountered some maintenance difficulties, this is not uncommon with new-build structures of this type, and we have been working to overcome them”. Since the delegation will now be using three floors, 144 athletes would be able to stay in the Village at the same time.
“We have 630 men working to fix the problems at the Olympic Village”, Andrada said in comments tweeted by the government’s Olympic account.
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“We made a decision to do a “stress test” where taps and toilets were simultaneously turned on in apartments on several floors to see if the system could cope once the athletes are in-house”.
