The next president of Brazil, who will take over after elections this week, faces the two biggest hosting challenges in the sporting world: the 2014 soccer World Cup and the Olympic Games in 2016.
As well as the need to make them the events financially viable, the new leader will also have to make them safe — protected from the rampant crime that blights Brazil’s cities.
The sporting showcases will be inherited from outgoing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who made winning hosting rights for the two events among the crowning achievements of his tenure.
On Sunday, Brazil’s voters will turn out to choose Lula’s successor. Polls suggest his former cabinet chief, Dilma Rousseff, will easily win, perhaps by enough to avoid the need for a runoff four weeks later.
“We are going to organize the best World Cup ever seen,” Lula vowed, seeing it as a chance to bolster Brazil’s already soaring self-esteem.
But the clock is already ticking, and construction plans are behind schedule.
Great uncertainties hang over the ambitious plans submitted to FIFA and the International Olympic Committee.
The 2016 Olympic Games will be the first held in South America, and Rio de Janeiro, the host city, will need around US$17 billion in public and private funds to stage it, according to official and independent estimates.
Forty percent of that sum will have to be invested in transport, to resolve Rio’s chaotic road system and languishing rail network, and to boost the bus fleet and metro system.
Security is also a priority to tame endemic violence. Urban reorganization will have to take place. The number of hotel rooms need to be doubled.
Rio’s state governor, Sergio Cabral, who looks likely to be re-elected in the general elections on Sunday, said US$144 million have been set aside to battle organized crime, develop social projects and weaken drug gangs’ grip on the city’s slums.
The World Cup in Brazil will involve 12 cities, with Rio — the scene for the final — at the forefront for investment and infrastructure.
Leon Myssior, the head of the team of architects designing the World Cup stadiums, told the financial newspaper Valor he was worried.
“We have infrastructure problems similar to those in Africa,” he said, referring to this year’s World Cup held in South Africa.
The incoming government will also have to tackle the task of renovating and expanding Brazil’s airports, most of which are saturated.
The World Cup is expected to bring in about 600,000 visitors.
State airport management agency Infraero calculates the cost of increasing the capacity of 16 terminals by two-thirds to accommodate those visitors at about US$7 billion.
Modernizing and extending road and rail links between the tournaments’ venues will require 5,200km of roads to be built and the renovation of seven ports for a cost of another US$400 million.
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