Bullets at equestrian center reveal Rio Olympics' grotesque contrast
So, here is quite a thing: Bullets keep flying into the Rio Olympics equestrian center.
Well, maybe keep is a stretch, but it's happened twice -- two bullets have flown into the Rio Olympics equestrian center over the past week. That's two more than you'd expect. It's also, one assumes, an Olympic record for bullets absorbed by the horse-event venue at any Games.
The first bullet arrived Saturday. It flew through the plastic of the roof of the equestrian center media tent, according to reports from the scene.
You May Also Like
"The bullet landed nearest to British photographer Jon Stroud — who is here working for the British Equestrian Federation (BEF). He ran to the far end of the room to seek help," reports Horse & Hound, an equestrian news outlet that was on the scene covering the hoofed competitions.
The Guardian reported the bullet passed "over the head of the New Zealand press attaché" before landing near Stroud, and that a Brazilian official speculated it might have been "fired by a gang member trying to shoot down a police blimp."
This sounds more like the beginning of a Jack Reacher novel than the Olympics. And we haven't even gotten to the second bullet.
That one was discovered Wednesday, not in the media tent but near the horse stables. Thursday morning, The Guardian's Owen Gibson delivered this report from Rio 2016 officials.
Surely, it's reassuring for the horses, athletes and journalists that the two bullets probably weren't aimed at them. The bullets just happened to whizz by and/or land near them.
But there's a bigger story here, and one that gets to the very heart of why mega-events held in struggling nations like Brazil engender so much protest and antipathy.
On the one had, we have the world of equestrian sports. The upkeep of a top-quality horse can cost more than $100,000 per year, while the outfits riders wear cost hundreds if not thousands more. And that's just the beginning. The Olympics are a privileged event, and the equestrian center may well represent the epicenter of that privilege.
But these bullets that landed in the Rio Olympics equestrian center were reportedly fired by gang members. And that reveals the dark side of these Rio Olympics: While the Games carry on for the privileged class, millions of Rio's poorest residents struggle just to survive in a city where firefights between drug gangs, or firefights between drug gangs and police, are commonplace.
Simon Romero of The New York Times highlights this juxtaposition in a story published online Thursday. Here are the first four paragraphs.
Fans were lining up to watch an American beach volleyball duo square off against Mexico on the alluring sands of Copacabana Beach.
But across town, far from the Olympic excitement, the crackling of gun battles echoed through the colossal favelas that envelop Rio de Janeiro’s hillsides.
As soon as he heard the bullets whizzing by early on Tuesday, Richard Conceição Dias, 9, knew what to do.
"I lied down on the floor, hugging my mom," said Richard, who lives in a one-room home in the sprawling Complexo do Alemão group of favelas with his mother and his three sisters. "She told me, 'Get away from the window, close your eyes, dream about something nice.'"
The stark contrast isn't lost on Richard's mom.
“We live worse than those pretty horses used to compete in the Olympic Games,” she told Romero.
And that's the thing. Those of us breathing the Olympics' rarified air in the touristy Ipanema and Copacabana districts -- or ogling the spectacle of the Games from abroad -- can cast a wry eye at bullets flying into the equestrian center.
It is undeniably a bizarre situation.
But just one paper-thin layer beneath the surface, it's a microcosm of the grotesque contrast on display in Rio this summer and nationwide in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup.
"It was a stray bullet and has nothing to do with the Games," Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada said after the first incident.
Andrada was wrong, though. The bullet has nothing to do with the Games and everything to do with the Games, all at the same time.
Topics Olympics
Sam Laird is Mashable's Senior Sports Reporter. He covers the wide, weird world of sports from all angles -- as well as occasional other topics -- from Mashable's San Francisco bureau. Before joining Mashable in November 2011, his freelance work appeared in publications including the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Slam, and East Bay Express. Sam is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and basketball and burritos take up most of his spare time. Follow him on Twitter @samcmlaird.
