ANALYSIS

The Olympics are on the skids and unblocking a few toilets in the village won’t rectify the many problems.

The Olympic movement has been in decline for some time and Rio might just be the Games that sink the IOC’s credibility as an honest broker in sport.

Given the unprecedented economic and political problems faced by Rio’s organisers, it’s actually a miracle these Games are being staged at all.

If Rio becomes like Montreal, crippled in debt, which is highly likely, fewer cities will bid for the Olympics in coming years.

The signs are already there.

Hamburg and Boston, two cities with the financial capacities to host the games, have recently withdrawn their bids to stage the 2024 event.

Among the reasons cited by Bostonians were the heavy costs and the IOC’s corruption.

Krakow, Oslo and Stockholm also withdrew their bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics, eventually won by Beijing – ahead of Kazakhstan’s Almaty.

Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Games. Photo: Getty

Those bids were pointers to the Olympics’ future.

Winning bidders will increasingly come from cashed-up authoritarian regimes, unaccountable to their constituents for splurges on sporting circuses.

The Sochi Olympics were the start of this process.

The Games were plagued by alleged corruption which saw costs blow-out to $US51 billion.

The IOC turned a blind-eye to this and Vladimir Putin’s clampdown on environmental activists and political dissidents in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Sochi proved endemic of the problems within the IOC.

Despite parroting the words of the modern Olympic movement’s founder, Pierre de Coubertin, about fair play, the IOC was only interested in its financial bottom line, protecting its intellectual property and ensuring the games remained apolitical.

Only a political fool would bid for the Olympics these days.

They are not worth the trouble or the expense, while the Olympic brand is being trashed by poor decision making.

Olympic crowds have been poor for some time. Photo: Getty

The problem with the Rio Games is not the city, but the IOC.

Its decision to allow Russia to compete undermines the integrity of the 2016 edition and the IOC’s claims to combatting doping in sport.

Reports of doping have already hit interest in the games.

A recent survey by the BBC of 19,000 people across 19 countries found that 57 per cent thought doping would have an impact “on the level of attention they will pay the Games.”

The survey was conducted before the recent Russian scandal, but already there was significant concern about doping’s effect on these Olympics.

The recent scandal in which the disgraced IAAF president, Lamine Diack, covered up doping and blackmailed athletes highlighted the corruption in international athletics.

Diack is gone and so too are many of the Russian athletes whose tests he tried to hide, but the taint lingers on.

Athletics is the showpiece sport of any Olympics.

But given athletics’ recent scandals, Rio looks like being little more than a cavalcade of test-tube champions.

The Russians are only part of a broader doping epidemic.

Around 40 Kenyan athletes have been suspended for doping since 2011.

This comes during a period when Kenya won 11 medals at the London Olympics and topped the table at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing.

Thank god for Usain: The Jamaican is the poster-boy of the Games. Photo: Getty

The Jamaicans also have their problems. Eight Jamaican athletes were suspended for doping in 2013, despite the country’s tardy approach to testing.

Surely, if the games are to be credible, athletes who have consistently missed tests should be barred.

The poster-boy of the Rio Games is Jamaica’s Usain Bolt.

His 100-metre world record is 9.58 seconds. Of all the athletes to run under 9.79 seconds, Bolt is the only non-doper.

If Bolt tests positive, now or in the future, the integrity of international athletics and the games are sunk.

With only a week until the opening ceremony, scientists are still trying to figure out who are the test-tube champs and cheats from the Beijing and London Olympics.

In an increasingly competitive sports market, the Olympics cannot afford such fiascos.

The real interest in Rio won’t be in the medal tally. It won’t be finalised until all the test tubes have been analysed.

Interest will be in whether viewers vote with their remote controls that the Games aren’t worth the trouble.

Meanwhile, Rio must find the money to pay for the IOC’s latest carnaval.

Dr Tom Heenan teaches sports studies at Monash University.