By Maddie Parise
In many ways, the Rio 2016 Olympic Games were a less successful kid brother living in the shadow of triumph accomplished just four years earlier by London.
Brazil’s summer games, tainted with outcries over crime, pollution and disease, will leave a much darker mark in Olympic history when compared to past games.
After the next few Olympic Games have come and gone, many will juxtapose the events with the unsuccessful facets of Rio 2016. Though the memories of robbery scandals and poor planning will be shrugged off, who will mention the deplorable condition presented for the Paralympic athletes, just weeks later?
Fears have been expressed in a Telegraph article by Paralympic wheelchair racer Tanni Grey- Thompson that Rio Paralympic athletes will be “treated as second-class citizens” due to the slew of issues already surfacing for the games.
Ticket sales for the Paralympics are low, as of Aug. 17 only 12 percent of available tickets had been sold according to the BBC.
As a former Paralympic competitor, Grey-Thompson finds the idea of performing in front of a near empty stadium to be “demoralizing.” This prospect is disappointing to game organizers and athletes alike, yet the conditions of Brazil don’t allow for high numbers.
When bidding for the honor of hosting these 2016 games, Brazil was dealing with less economic turmoil and no international scare over the Zika Virus. The odds were against Brazil to reach even close to the amount of success London achieved. Though to be fair, countries should probably just realize by now that hosting the Olympics will probably wreck your homeland in one way or another. In addition to low ticket sales, accommodations for athletes is devastatingly poor. Funds are lacking when it comes to necessities such as travel and food of Paralympic athletes and their teams. It almost seems as though Rio planned out the Olympics and then ran out of speed by the time the topic of the Paralympics hit the conference room.
These conditions have taken a toll on the hype for the Paralympics, both in and out of Brazil. Grey-Thompson remembers nearly every Olympic banner in London transforming into Paralympic form by the time those games began, yet Rio seems to certainly be less excited.It appears to be more of a headache than a celebration of strength against physical adversity. There are certain hurdles that Rio could not have planned for, but it goes without saying that the Paralympics should be treated as equal in importance to the Olympics. For future Olympic and Paralympic games (that will likely be planned more meticulously), I hope that the basic needs of athletes are considered first in the celebration of the incredible feats of human strength this world has to offer.