The mayor of Rio de Janeiro has hit back at the Australian Olympic Committee’s concerns about the “uninhabitable” state of the athletes’ village by cracking a joke about kangaroos.
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Just under two weeks before the games begin on August 5, Australia’s delegation had said on Sunday it would not move into the Olympic Village because it was “not safe or ready”, citing deficiencies like “blocked toilets, leaking pipes and exposed wiring”.
Another boxer, the USA’s reigning Olympic and world middleweight champion Claressa Shields, wrote on her Facebook page: “I’m here to tell you, me and the Team USA boxing team have been here 5 days with 0 problems!”, adding that “Rio is a handsome place!”
By Wednesday, all athletes and officials will be able to move in to the Olympic Village.
According to the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, a drug bust occurred Monday night in which police seized 93 baggies of cocaine, many of them decorated with the Olympic rings and the official Rio 2016 logo.
Sidney Levy, the CEO of the Rio organizing committee, told The Associated Press that half of the 31 apartment buildings in the village complex were ready on Monday.
“Unfortunately, Rio 2016 expects this to take another few days”. ― AFP picRIO DE JANEIRO, July 26 ― The latest booking stats released by Airbnb show that of the 55,000 travellers who’ve booked a short-term vacation rental during the Rio Olympic games, almost half are Brazilian.
Interestingly, 60 per cent of travellers who booked a room during the Rio Olympics said it was their first time using the short-term vacation rental site, while 62 per cent of hosts also said it was the first time they opened up their homes.
Rio organizers have been scrambling to clear all of the buildings in the village after the Australian team could not move into their quarters.
Chiller said she and Mayor Paes have a date planned for when the team officially moves in. “I have arranged a little present for the mayor as well”, Chiller said. “I look forward to meeting him after two years of banter in the media”.
Paes sarcastically said he was tempted to put “a kangaroo jumping outside” the Australians’ building to make them happy.
Chiller stressed her comments had not been an attack on Brazil.
Emphasizing the importance of sports for sustainable development, the senior United Nations official said that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development acknowledged that sport is an important enabler of sustainable development and recognized its contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including its goals related to the empowerment of women and of young people and individuals and communities, health, education and social inclusion. “It wasn’t a slur”. But that was a dry run.
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“Problems include blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed and dirty floors in need of a massive clean”, the head of the Australian team, Kitty Chiller, said in a statement.
