Olympic ideal laudable even if Rio reality laughable

The Rio Olympics: What is it good for?

The answer, just on the back of one quick Google search yesterday, would appear to be absolutely feck all. Not exactly the most scientific of experiments, to be fair, but the top 10 results when the words ‘Rio Olympics’ were punched into the search engine at about 11.30am summed up succinctly the global mood.

‘Russia holds its own Games for banned athletes’, was the first headline courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald. Three more results focused on the Russian doping scandal and one on athletes’ complaints about the Olympic village. Four sifted through the appalling sanitation situation in the host city, particularly the waters, and the other was simply a general treatise on the history of chaos and corruption that has always dogged the Olympic movement and its showpieces.