Funny start. Barely opened, the Olympic village of Rio de Janeiro is already the subject of controversy. A “business”, a real one, in which the Australian delegation plays the main role.
Arriving in Brazil among the first, the Australian team was to take up residence in the athletes' village, in Barra da Tijuca, from the middle of the week. Around twenty of its members, mainly officials, had to wipe the casts and locate the locations before the first athletes. But their experiment quickly ended. Today they refuse to join the village and live in neighboring hotels. They consider the places unsafe and uninhabitable.
Kitty Chiller, the chef de mission of the Australian team at Rio 2016, explained this via a press release published by her Olympic committee. “We are having problems with the plumbing. There are leaking pipes. We also have electrical problems. We have cleanliness problems. Some stairs are not well lit. There is a strong smell of gas in some accommodations and an electrical short circuit. » Mike Tancred, head of the press service of the Australian Olympic Committee, specifies: “We did resistance tests on Saturday, used the sinks, the toilets. Water was running down the walls. From the outside it looks like a Hilton hotel. Inside, it's not over. »
According to Kitty Chiller (photo below), Australia would not be the only delegation to judge the village uninhabitable. The early arrivals of the British and New Zealand teams experienced similar problems, which are believed to have lasted for at least a week.
In a statement, the IOC said athletes requiring inadequate accommodation “will be moved to the best possible locations in other buildings. » According to local media, around 5% of the 3600 apartments are affected by the problems noted by the Australian team.
Built especially for the Games, the Olympic village has 3.600 apartments. They will be sold after the end of the Paralympic Games, at prices that can reach nearly 700.000 euros.
