OpinionSuckers? Hi-tech and efficient Tokyo out to prove that hosting the Olympic Games is not a bad bet
Rio de Janeiro’s daunting legacy of public debt and government ineptitude hangs over a far from stable Japan with the 2020 Games on the horizon
There’s a sucker born every minute. It doesn’t matter who said it, all that matters is that the phrase is older than anyone reading this. Much, much older. It became part of the lexicon around 1870 and today, it has clearly stood the test of time.
As the Olympic flame was passed from Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo amidst a snappy 10 minute hi-tech showcase featuring everyone from Hello Kitty,
Pac-man,Captain Tsubasa and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe disguised as Super Mario, it became official.
The neon capital of the universe will welcome the world in 2020 as Asia gets ready to hog the next three Olympics, with Pyeongchang in South Korea hosting the Winter edition in 2018 and Beijing doing the honours in 2022.
For Rio, it is over and out and really not a moment too soon. Fair or not, it seemed like the organisers, the city and the country stumbled from one unmanageable crisis to another. After hosting both the football World Cup and the Olympics over the past two years, Brazil certainly won’t miss the unremitting gaze of global scrutiny.
Shinzo Abe dressed as Super Mario at Rio closing ceremony is today’s weirdest/greatest moment in geopolitics
With a legacy of massive public debt, endless negative publicity, complaints of inadequate facilities and uninhabitable accommodations amidst dangerous streets, as well as murky green water in the diving pool and scandalously false tales of frat boy swimmers robbed at gunpoint in a taxi, there is only one question left to answer: who would want to host an Olympic Games?