Its going to be interesting whats going to happen to all the poor people that live just 3 blocks up the mountain side from Rio's prime million dollar real estate?

The Olympic Games are a nice idea in principle, but the reality is they're an horrendous waste of resources, an environmental catastrophe and yet another excuse to use public money to generate millions/billions for private investors/enterprise.

i make your words mine. perfectly put.

like you said, why can we not celebrate in the same way erradicating poverty and giving everyone a decent place to live????

It's a shame the human race doesn't feel the need to celebrate cerebral achievements as much as it does physical.

I really hope the 2016 event can genuinely benefit Brazil in the long term and the corruption can be minimised.

however, (and this is a big however) and in spite of the big party you must have seen on tv, most thinking brazilians have mixed feelings about not only hosting the olympics but also the 2014 world cup. i will give you some of the reasons we have for not being as ecstatic as the people celebrating in copacabana yesterday:

• there are so many urgent things to do in brasil that it is almost irresponsible to host those two huge events here;
• this will be a big opportunity for corruption in a huge scale (the 2007 panamerican games ended up costing 10x as much as it was estimated and no one seems to be responsible for it...);
• the excuse is that rio and the other cities will be greatly improved because of both events. why then those things were not done before if there is money for the two events?
• how can a country host the olympics if there is no olympic program to develop the several sports that take part in it? except for football/soccer, for which there is much organization, success in almost all other sports is a freak, the result of personal effort and happy circumstances. even voleyball, in which we have had great wins lately, is not a widespread phenomenon.

rio is a great place to be. i am sure some positive things wii result from what is going to happen until 2016.

the video they presented in copenhagen is actually quite good for getting a feeling of rio.

Chris