Rio faces uphill battle as Olympic city

BRAZIL: Known for its idyllic beaches and carnival, Rio officially assumed the mantle of Olympic city on Sunday, facing an uphill struggle in taming traffic gridlock, poor infrastructure and slum violence to stage the 2016 Olympics.

With the end of the 2012 Games, London hands over the Olympic banner to Rio as the next Games host city.

The Brazilian Olympic Organizing Committee and city authorities insist that all the planned infrastructure projects have already begun, although the Olympic village that will welcome some 14,000 athletes and the Olympic park that will host nine events have yet to get off the ground. There is still no executive master plan and no clarity about how much staging the world's biggest sporting event will cost.

The major challenges, according to experts, are transportation, infrastructure and accommodation.

This city of 6.5 million people expects to welcome more than a million tourists and more than 10,500 athletes over 15 days but will have only 34,000 hotel rooms for 2016.

And it is notorious for its massive traffic jams.

Some of the infrastructure projects for the 2016 Olympics will be ready for the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup Brazil is due to stage, but much work still remains undone.

AFP