RIO 2016: Despite being extremely proud of the Australian Olympic Team, Chef de Mission Kitty Chiller has described the 2016 Rio Olympic Games as extremely challenging.
“This has widely been acknowledged as the toughest Games ever; to prepare for and perform in,” Chiller said.
“While Zika was a non-event, security was a massive challenge. Transport had its problems and of course, the Village was problematic at the start.”
Chiller was good-humoured as she reflected on the early problems.
“Until Andrew Bogut came to my room to put up my shower curtain and his plumber mates from Dandenong came to fix my toilet, the Village certainly had its teething problems and put us all to the test from day one.” Chiller said.
“At every level this has been an enormously difficult Games to deliver for the Australian Olympic Team.
“Despite the challenges though, the fields of play, the venues, the backdrops were spectacular. The volunteers were friendly and genuinely invested in the success of these Games for their city.”
Offering an interesting insight into how these Games compared to others, Chiller didn’t hold back.
“I think it’s certainly been the most trying Games for many, many people on the officials’ side, much more so than any Games I’ve been involved with,” Chiller revealed.
“This is my fourth Games as an official.
“Any of those off-field issues and challenges we had, I am very, very confident in saying that did not impact on our performance at all.
“We retained out performance-focused environment in the Village, we retained the culture that we wanted in the Village and that’s our job, to protect the athletes from any of the challenges back of house and I think we did a very good job at doing that.”
Chiller said the security problems began the night of Opening Ceremony.
“One and a half minutes into marching into the main stadium I got a call saying two of our rowing coaches had been mugged and robbed at knifepoint 100 metres from our accommodation in Ipanema and it didn’t really stop from there,” Chiller added.
“We said all along that bringing home 421 athletes and all our officials safe and sound was the primary objective of these Games and, at times, it looked like there was a huge risk that that would not be possible and that’s why we constantly reviewed on a daily, hourly basis our security protocols, reinforced the importance of those and sanctioned those who didn’t recognise and didn’t respect the importance of them.
“Security by far was the biggest challenge.”
Despite the challenges, Chiller said these Games will leave an enormous legacy.
“The Bus Rapid Transport, the metro line, the roads, the venues obviously – there’s been an enormous legacy for this city so while it’s been very challenging, there’s still been a lot of positives that the Olympic Games will make in this great city,” concluded Chiller.
Here’s to Tokyo 2020.
Sophie Onikul
olympics.com.au
