Gilbert Felli: Rio 2016 Entering Most Difficult Period

(ATR) Senior Olympic Games advisor Gilbert Felli tells Around the Rings the last five months before the Olympic Games are the most challenging for organizers.

"Five months to go it is always tough for an organizing committee and the staff," he tells ATR while attending the Association of Global Events Suppliers conference in St. Augustine, Florida.

"You’ve got the old staff that has been here for years that start to be tired because they have to deliver a lot of test events and every day they’ve got newcomers they need to educate and put to work. This is a very high pressure on the people to deliver the Games.

"You have been working for two to five years and suddenly you go to the venues to put together your structure and you see if all the pieces are going together like a puzzle or if there are discrepancies. That’s why it’s a difficult period."

Felli says that throughout his time as the Olympic Games director for the IOC and now as a senior Olympic advisor, assisting the organizers of the Rio Olympics may be the biggest challenge he’s faced due to the country’s non-Olympic related issues.

"Every [bid] has had some difficulties at one point or the other, but now it seems to be the most challenging because of the general situation in Brazil," he tells ATR. "The economy is going badly, the political side is going badly and they also have difficulties like Zika that doesn’t help them.

"It makes it a challenge but it doesn’t mean that we won’t have a great Games because I believe that what will be put in place and what the president will do to welcome the world will be great."

He admits that the IOC knew it would be difficult staging the Games in Brazil when the country was awarded the host city contract in October 2009.

"It is more difficult to go to a country like Brazil and we said at the beginning that it’s for legacy. It’s not going to be easy … but we believed that for Rio the Games would bring more legacy than any other country’s bid but that’s why it is difficult to put everything into place."

Now that the Games are just five months away, Felli says he and the IOC can only help as much as possible to make sure everything is delivered on time.

"What we are trying to do is try to understand with them how we can push things forward and where we can help them," he says. "For instance, next week I will be starting what we call a venue walkthrough. We will go through each of the venues and see where the media will go, where the athletes will go so we can help correct things so when the show comes it will be solved."

He says that despite the challenges facing the Rio 2016 organizing committee, there is still enough time to get everything ready to host the Olympics.

"Yes because I would say the capital work, everything is more or less ready. We may have one issue here and there but we will not fail completely on the capital work.

"What will happen in the street and what will happen in Brazil, it will be a party."

Written by Kevin Nutley in St. Augustine, Florida.

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