‘First 2016 Games venues ready next summer’

Rio mayor promises completion of majority of the venues by next year

RIO DE JANEIRO: The first venues for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics will be completed by August or September next year, promised the city’s mayor during a site visit.

“In our heads, the Olympics start next year. We will start to deliver the venues by August-September,” Eduardo Paes told journalists at the enormous Olympic Park, which covers an area of 1.18 million square kilometres 30km west of Rio.

Amid the bustle of lorries and cranes that whip up clouds of dust and in sweltering heat, the site at Barra da Tijuca has come on considerably in recent months, although most of the infrastructure will not be in place until only a few weeks before the Games, which will run from August 5 to 21, 2016.

Construction of the stands at the tennis venue is almost finished and the roof of Carioca Arena 3, which will host taekwondo, fencing and paralympic judo, is being installed.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2014.

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