By David Gold
August 24 – Brazilian Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo has insisted that there is “no secret” to staging a major sports event and that the country is prepared for the challenges ahead.
Brazil is hosting the world’s two biggest sports events in the coming years, with the FIFA World Cup in 2014 followed by the Olympics and Paralympics in 2016.
Rebelo (pictured top) said: “There’s no secret to organising a World Cup or an Olympic Games.
“There’s a lot of work to do and we’re working on it – we are prepared.”
He added: “We are very proud of these very important events and are working hard to exceed the expectations of all who hold the World Cup and Olympics in the highest regard, and to make sure that all of those expectations are duly fulfilled.”
While Brazil has hosted the World Cup before, in 1950, South America has never previously had the privilege of staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The continent has only hosted World Cups in smaller formats, such as the 13-team competition Brazil staged in 1950 and the 16-nation version in Argentina in 1978; some 13 teams took part when Uruguay held the inaugural competition in 1930 and 16 when Chile acted as hosts in 1962.
Despite Rebelo’s positive assurances, there have been major concerns over preparations for the World Cup in particular, with construction work on a number of stadiums slow to get underway.
However, since the departure from the Brazilian football scene of former World Cup Organising Committee chief Ricardo Teixeira, the former head of the country’s Football Confederation (CBF), progress has nevertheless been made.
Stadiums, such as the iconic Maracanã (pictured above), are now on track for completion by next year and the controversial World Cup law has been finally ratified, although there are still worries over airport capacity.
Rebelo said Brazil is a country “undergoing its own building process”, adding: “We are building as a country and this puts us in a [good] position to face the deficiencies…and to leave a better country for its citizens as a legacy of the events,” he remarked.
He also pointed out that the World Cup, and Olympics and Paralympics would not be the first large-scale organisational challenges his country had encountered, referring to major political and sporting events previously held in the country.
In 1992, Brazil hosted the Rio Summit for the Environment, a conference still referenced during environmental debates, and the Rio+20 World Summit in June this year.
Aside from the 1950 World Cup (pictured above), the biggest sports event Brazil has previously staged was the Pan American Games in 2007, also in Rio de Janeiro.
As a result of staging those Games, Rio has estimated that 56 per cent of necessary buildings for the Olympics and Paralympics are already in place.
Rebelo also revealed that, to provide Brazil’s Olympians with a welcome boost ahead of Rio 2016, a new initiative is set to be announced by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to help the country exceed the 17 medals won at London 2012, some three short of the Sports Minister’s expectations.
This will include investments and collaboration from the Ministry of Sport, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Defence as well as other state-owned companies.
“The estimate of the Brazilian Olympic Committee was to reach around 15 medals in the London Olympic Games, [although] my personal prognostic, based on the high-performance sport investments the Government was making, was of 20,” he said.
“We can look at 2016 more holistically, not only regarding the number of medals we’re going to achieve but also the democratisation of access to sports facilities in the country.”
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