Rio 2016 Set to Welcome World in London

7/20/2012

(ATR) Rio 2016 President Carlos Nuzman calls the London Olympics an “important step” on the way to the next Summer Olympics. Nuzman leads a team of 100+ observers who have come to London to learn from these Games, the last ones before Rio de Janeiro.

Nuzman spoke to reporters at Casa Brazil, the hospitality center for the Brazilian Olympic Committee and Rio 2016 located in the historic Somerset House in the center of London. The venue was the administrative center for the British empire in the 19th century.

For the next three weeks Somerset House will play host to the Brazilians. It opened Friday with an exhibition of Brazil art that will stay up through the London Games. Next week the president of Brazil, Dilma Roussef, is expected to visit.

Nuzman would not divulge details of the eight-minute portion of the closing ceremony in London dedicated to passing the Olympic flag to Rio.

He would not comment on London’s last-minute security woes that center on the failure of private security firm G4S to recruit all the staff that’s needed for the Games. Nuzman said work for security was already underway in Rio and that the task would be covered by a combination of federal, state and municipal forces. He said private security would be employed within the venues.

After the sudden resignation last month of the Rio 2016 chief operating officer, Nuzman said a replacement has been hired. Marco Aurelio Costa Vieira will arrive in London July 22 and will stay through the Games. A former government official, he also is experienced in Olympic sport via modern pentathlon.

The Casa Brazil set up also includes a boutique for branded Rio 2016 merchandise, a first for an organizing committee in the host city preceding those Games. Sylmara Multini, general manger for licensing, retail and concessions tells ATR that Rio 2016 has worked closely with London in this effort. The boutique is the only place in the city where the merchandise, including pins made by Honav, can be purchased.

Alex Flemming, one of 50 Brazilian artists involved in the exhibition “From the Margin to the Edge: Brazilian Art and Design in the 21st Century” tells Around the Rings the coming of the 2016 Olympics will be important to him and his colleagues.

“I think with these two major events, the World Cup and the Olympics two years later, the whole world will be looking at Brazil,” says Flemming.

“Brazilian art is of a very high level and I expect that the World Cup and the Olympics will bring it more attention,” he says.

Homepage photo by Around the Rings. 

Written and reported in London by Ed Hula.

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