After Olympic party, Rio sees long road ahead

RIO DE JANEIRO – As Rio awoke from a night of celebration after being awarded the 2016 Olympics, Brazil was already looking ahead to years of hard work in what will be a historic time in Latin America’s biggest nation.

The world’s two biggest sporting events will be taking place in Brazil a few years from now – the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics – and the country has little time to spare in getting ready.

“We know the IOC decision has increased our responsibility,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said. “We know what we need to do. The word from now on is work, work and work.”

Critics have questioned whether Brazil’s infrastructure can handle such large events, and whether the country is safe enough to welcome the participants and tens of thousands of visitors into the country. Others say the events will help Brazil’s emerging status as a world power – with the country predicted as the world’s fifth-largest economy by 2016 – and serve as a catalyst for change and improvement to more than 190 million people.

“Brazil needed the Olympics, we needed this challenge,” Silva said in Copenhagen just hours after Rio beat Madrid, Tokyo and Chicago. “We only needed one chance to prove that we are a great nation and that we have the capacity to do well just like any other country in the world.”

Football’s governing body FIFA in 2007 awarded Brazil the World Cup for the first time since 1950, and the International Olympic Committee on Friday decided to bring the games to South America for the first time.

It will be the fourth time the same nation hosts the Olympics and the World Cup consecutively – Mexico did it in 1968 and 1970, Germany in 1972 and 1974 and the United States in 1994 and 1996.

“That’s something I didn’t think I would see one day in Brazil,” 78-year-old retiree Claudio Correa said Saturday while strolling on Ipanema beach. “Two big events like these right here. It certainly puts Brazil’s name right up there.”

Silva said that in addition to giving Brazil the status of a “first-class nation,” the high-profile competitions also give Brazil a boost in pride and self-esteem.

“No one is happier than Brazil’s people,” Silva said. “But maybe because we were a colony for such a long time, we always had this sense of inferiority, of not being important. We always thought that we couldn’t do what the others could.”

But with a sound technical project and a lot of passion, the Brazilians and Rio de Janeiro convinced the IOC they were finally ready to host the Olympics after failed attempts in 1936, 2004 and 2012.

But there is a lot to do before Brazil can call itself ready to stage the two major competitions. (AP)