Australian Athletes Refuse To Enter “Uninhabitable” Rio Olympic Village
Trending News: The Rio Olympic Village Is Apparently Disgusting
Why Is This Important?
Because the Rio Olympics are shaping up to be a fiasco on, just, so many levels.
Long Story Short
After checking out their digs in the Olympic Athlete’s Village, the Australian team decided they’d be better off staying in a hotel, declaring their accommodations “uninhabitable.”
Long Story
The run-up to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio hasn’t been good. Stories of filthy water, a collapse of law and order, political scandals and high crime have been circulating for a while now. And now it appears the athletes competing don’t even want to stay in the apartments designed to house them.
With less than two weeks to go before the opening ceremonies, the Australian delegation has decided the athlete’s village is “not safe or ready,” and won’t be staying there until things have been fixed. Problems include leaky pipes, exposed wiring, poor lighting, dirty floors and, best of all, blocked toilets. They were supposed to move in on Sunday. They’ll be staying at hotels for time being instead.
“We decided to do a ‘stress test’ where taps and toilets were simultaneously turned on in apartments on several floors to see if the system could cope once the athletes are in-house,” Australia’s chef de mission Kitty Chiller said in a statement. “The system failed. Water came down walls, there was a strong smell of gas in some apartments and there was ‘shorting’ in the electrical wiring.”
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The mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, wasn’t pleased with the complaints. He said that “I almost feel like putting a kangaroo in front of their door to make them feel at home.”
Still, other countries are also complaining about the facilities, and are even contracting their own renovations or flying in technicians to fix the problems.
Rio officials are promising that the facilities will be ready on time, and have hired thousands of extra maintenance and custodial workers to keep the village clean. No word on how they'll prevent porn companies from shooting scenes on public beaches, however.
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Ask The Big Question
Are the Rio Games going to be as bad as people predict?
Disrupt Your Feed
Good or bad, Rio’s problems probably won’t get a whole lot of coverage of once the games get underway.
Drop This Fact
Rio’s Olympic Village is the largest in history, with some 3,600 units.
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