--- title: 2016 Rio Olympics: Why the Games Will Be a Failure description: The Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games were supposed to be a celebration of Brazil and of all South America. Instead, they will be a failure. canonical: https://time.com/4412692/2016-rio-olympics-failure/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-07-19T15:40:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:19.578Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Rio Olympics Will Be a Failure—But Not for the Reasons You Think og:description: Our global sense of international order has failed og:url: https://time.com/4412692/2016-rio-olympics-failure/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt01c7ada285c35240/69889c85e20a87185da91a54/rio.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5184 og:image:height: 2916 og:image:alt: Trash is burned in an area where garbage is dumped near the main highway linking Rio's international airport to the city in the Mare favela community complex in Rio de Janeiro on July 18, 2016. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Rio Olympics Will Be a Failure—But Not for the Reasons You Think twitter:description: Our global sense of international order has failed twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt01c7ada285c35240/69889c85e20a87185da91a54/rio.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Rio Olympics Will Be a Failure—But Not for the Reasons You Think > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Super-Bacteria Found in Rio's Olympic Beaches [Watch (HLS stream): Super-Bacteria Found in Rio's Olympic Beaches](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zC67MfZs.m3u8) (0:36)  _Published 2016-07-05. Scientists find a drug resistant super-bacteria in Rio's beaches where Olympic athletes plan to compete. Lauren Gambino (@lauren_gambino) has more._ by [John S. Baick](https://time.com/author/john-s-baick/) ## John S. Baick Jul 19, 2016 3:40 PM UTC  Trash is burned in an area where garbage is dumped near the main highway linking Rio's international airport to the city in the Mare favela community complex in Rio de Janeiro on July 18, 2016. Trash is burned in an area where garbage is dumped near the main highway linking Rio's international airport to the city in the Mare favela community complex in Rio de Janeiro on July 18, 2016. Mario Tama—Getty Images by [John S. Baick](https://time.com/author/john-s-baick/) ## John S. Baick Jul 19, 2016 3:40 PM UTC The [Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games](http://time.com/money/4426714/watch-olympics-rio-games-2016-online/) were supposed to be a celebration of Brazil and of all South America, the first Olympics held on the continent and one of few ever held in the Southern hemisphere. Here was a moment that seemed consistent with the original vision of the Olympic Games as a friendly international competition, of nations who might be rivals but were not enemies, of a world that could come together to celebrate athletic excellence and comity. It is safe to say that these idealistic impulses will be overwhelmed by a 2016 that continues to shock, a year in which the international order has been tested and found wanting. The Rio Games will be a failure, no matter how successful they might be in terms of athletic accomplishment and spectator enjoyment, because our global sense of an international order has failed. It is a divided, distracted and even defeated international community that is slouching towards Rio. The modern Olympic Games were founded in 1896 by [Pierre de Coubertin](http://registration.olympic.org/en/faq/detail/id/189), a French aristocrat who hoped that the games could offer a venue where gentlemen could compete on the playing field instead of the battlefield. Coubertin’s [Olympic flag design](https://www.olympic.org/news/100-years-of-the-olympic-flag) of five interlocking rings—representing the five major continents and all the world’s nations—was adopted in 1914, but Coubertin’s vision was lost in the trenches of Europe. In war and peace, in hot war and cold, the Olympics were more often than not a proxy battle for world leadership. For Americans, the greatest moment was the [victory](http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/feb-22-1980-u-s-a-beats-soviet-union-in-miracle-on-ice/?%5Fr=0) of the USA hockey over the Soviet Union in the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. But the Cold War also saw two boycotts—the American [boycott](http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carter-announces-olympic-boycott) of the Moscow Summer Games in 1980 and the Soviet [boycott](http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviets-announce-boycott-of-1984-olympics) of the Los Angeles Summer Games in 1984—that undermined the pretense of international harmony. Many nations have sought to use the Olympics to highlight their rising power. Germany’s 1936 Berlin Olympics were supposed to [promote](https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005680) Hitler’s Aryan supremacy, China’s 2008 Olympics were a [proclamation](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/08/olym-a08.html) of the power and wealth of communist capitalism (or capitalist communism), and the 2014 Russian Olympics were a [tribute](http://news.nationalpost.com/news/for-putin-its-personal-sochi-olympics-symbolize-a-comeback-for-russia-and-its-middle-aged-leader) to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet some Olympics expressed hope for internationalism. Nations like Australia and Canada hosted Olympics showcasing their irreverent national personalities. Especially poignant in retrospect are the 1984 Winter Olympics in [Sarajevo](https://www.britannica.com/event/Sarajevo-1984-Olympic-Winter-Games), Yugoslavia. Though at the height of the Reagan administration’s anti-Soviet rhetoric, Americans were charmed by images of a multiethnic communist nation hosting the world. Here was an Olympics that offered hope to a thaw in the Cold War world, a belief that the international order could provide a safety valve to defuse tensions and allow different world views to coexist. The terrible [irony](https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/haunting-pictures-of-the-abandoned-sarajevo-winter-olympi) is that Sarajevo would be overwhelmed by civil war and genocide soon after the end of the Cold War, turning a successful Olympics into a footnote for later tragedy. In Brazil, the national government is in crisis, and the local Rio [government](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/18/482593048/rios-governor-declares-state-of-calamity-ahead-of-olympic-games) on the verge of bankruptcy. The [beach](http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/americas/rio-olympics-body-parts-found/) that is supposed to revel in the exposed flesh of beach volleyball players recently was awash with dismembered body parts. Rio waterways teem with [garbage](http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/%5F/id/14791849/trash-contamination-continue-pollute-olympic-training-competition-sites-rio-de-janeiro) and untreated human waste. The absence of some top athletes—including the [withdrawal](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikmatuszewski/2016/07/11/jordan-spieths-withdrawal-is-the-latest-blow-for-golf-as-rio-olympics-loses-its-best-foursome/#35ffd0001b24) of multimillionaire golfers—will be contrasted with the rising misery of a host city, nation and continent that don’t have the choice of withdrawing, and who lack the public health resources to deal with staggering human cost of the [Zika virus](http://time.com/4360632/zika-rio-olympics/). Even without these problems, the Olympic dream of extolling the international order would be a hollow exercise. Populism, nationalism, xenophobia, terrorism and war are the interlocking rings of our era. Communism clearly lost the Cold War. But what won? A “new world order” never emerged beyond a pursuit of hypercapitalist globalization. And this international order has been deeply shaken by the Great Recession, income inequality, falling oil prices, the Brexit and other rumblings in the E.U. Americans are waiting for a disaster spectacle. They are waiting for an event that comes only every four years, an event that shows the highs and lows of human ambition and accomplishment, with ferocious competition and sacrifice, with winners and losers and cheers and tears, and with a seemingly built-in guarantee of failure and debacle. It will make remarkable television viewing. That event is the Republican National Convention. 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