James Lawton: A Carnival version of the Games – and about time too

Comment

It had to be Rio if the Olympics still likes to believe their purpose is to take a message of hope and joy to every corner of the world rather than pursuing the best TV deals and most guaranteed profits.

The idea, heaven knows, has been assailed so many times since the first modern Games in Athens in 1896 – and never more so than 13 years ago when the IOC (International Olympic Committee) spurned the chance of a centenary celebration back in Greece, preferring the lure of Coca-Cola's cash in Atlanta.

The choice was catastrophic and the memory of something that resembled a garish commercial bazaar, and also suffered a bomb outrage, plainly worked against the claims of Chicago.

Even the aura of Barack Obama could not overcome that hurdle – plus the fact that corruption in the successful bidding for the Winter Olympics of 2002 in Salt Lake City left a stain on the Olympic movement.

It meant that between them, Atlanta and Salt Lake City amounted to too much of a burden for the bid from another American city where political chicanery is not exactly unknown, although no-one expected Chicago's rejection in the first round of voting.

That Madrid formed the final opposition to Rio was only a surprise for those who discounted the lingering influence of 90-year-old former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. But then the old and most knowing fox in the Olympic movement also faced heavy odds. Barcelona had the Games in 1992 and despite the brilliant staging there, a winning bid by Madrid would have meant that three successive Olympics in Europe, after summer Games in London and the next winter competition in Russia, would have smacked of European favouritism.

That would have brought great bitterness in Brazil, where President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva has been driving home the fact that South America was still waiting for its first Olympics. "It is time," said the President – a sentiment echoed by the nation's great footballing icon, Pele.

The explosion of joy that greeted the news from Copenhagen in lunch-time Rio displayed the most compelling facet of the Brazilian asset – a long-established reputation for celebrating life.

No doubt the IOC had reservations about the precarious finances of the volatile nation – and the fact that despite Brazil's status as the most thrilling and successful exponents of the world's most popular game, football, Rio has little or no adequate sports stadia.

The vast Maracana may be football's most exciting venue but it is more than many thousands of miles away from the futuristic Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing. Maracana loiters in another age, but the Brazilians say that after the regimented organisation of the Chinese and the reserve of a financially embattled London they will offer the sports version of Carnival.

It was an enticing offer in a time of financial restraint and in the end it was irresistible. However many Olympic records fall, there is one certainty. In 2016 we will have the Samba Games. It might just prove precisely the requirement of a battle-worn world.