Rio inaugurates Olympic legacy eight years after the Games – 02/07/2024 – Sport

Almost eight years after the end of the 2016 Olympics, Rio de Janeiro City Hall begins this month a series of inaugurations of the legacy of the Games in the city. The deliveries are conversions of arenas into public facilities, some in other parts of the city based on the nomadic structure of stadiums.

This Tuesday (6), Mayor Eduardo Paes (PSD) inaugurated two technological educational gymnasiums in Bangu and Santa Cruz, in the west zone, built from the structure of the Arena do Futuro, which hosted the handball competitions. On Wednesday (7), he and President Lula handed over the Isabel Salgado sports educational gymnasium in the former Arena 3, which hosted taekwondo, fencing and Paralympic judo competitions.

Mayor at the time of the Games, Paes attributes the delay in converting the equipment to the management that succeeded him, in 2017, by Marcelo Crivella (Republicans). The Olympic Legacy Plan was resumed in 2021, when Paes resumed the municipality. When contacted, the former mayor did not comment.

The fate of part of the arenas was already defined since their construction. However, the initial forecast was that the transformation of the nomadic structure would last up to two years.

In addition to the schools in Bangu and Santa Cruz, the material from Arena do Futuro will be used to build two other teaching units in Campo Grande and Rio das Pedras, also in the west zone.

The reuse of the Aquatic Park pool is also planned for this year. It will be assembled in Parque Oeste, a space under construction on a plot of land measuring more than 234 thousand meters in Inhoaíba, also in the west zone.

The city hall also used steel material from the old Media Center in the construction of the Gentileza Intermodal Terminal, in the center, which will integrate VLT and buses from the Transbrasil corridor. The Velodrome, which is also located in the Olympic Park, will host the Olympic Museum.

Arenas Carioca 1 and 2 and the Olympic Tennis Center are managed by the federal government and host sports competitions. In a statement, the Ministry of Sports reported spending R$20 million every year on the maintenance of the Barra Olympic Park.

The circulation area of ​​the Olympic Park is also still under construction for its final destination after the Games. The city hall is building a public installation with more than 900 trees and 16 thousand shrubs, sports courts, squares, renovation of the skate park, wet square and colored floors, to be opened in the first half of 2024.

Despite attributing the delay in allocating the legacy to his predecessor, Paes also failed to implement his initial plans for the Olympic Park, to grant it to the private sector. He ended his term without a clear definition of space management, which passed into the hands of the federal government during the Crivella administration.

The initial objective was for Arena 1 to be used by a private concessionaire to hold events. The bidding notice, however, had no interested parties.

At Deodoro Radical Park, the pool where the canoe slalom competition took place continues to be open to the public. It has been used for this purpose since 2015, when it was inaugurated before the Games. The BMX track, however, remains abandoned.