Paving the Olympic Dream: The Politics of the 2007 Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The making of the 2007 Pan-American Games, held in the city of Rio de Janeiro, marked the beginning of the long transformation that this city would undergo in connection to sports mega-events. This paper revisits how the 2007 Pan-American Games were largely produced under the promise that its legacies, particularly the infrastructural ones, could be effectively mobilized in order to strengthen the chances of bringing the Olympics to Brazil for the first time. Whereas this rhetoric has proven somewhat successful in helping the city to secure the right to host the 2016 Olympics, the alleged connection between both events has shown to be much more limited than its proponents had initially advertized. In reality, most of the venues constructed for the Pan-American Games had to be thoroughly renovated for the Olympics, while some of them presented structural problems and/or failed to meet the standards imposed by international sports federations.