Los Angeles Is In A 4-Year Sprint To Deliver A Car-Free 2028 Olympics

BY JAY L. ZAGORSKY

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MARKETS,

PUBLIC POLICY AND LAW,

BOSTON UNIVERSITY

With the Olympic torch extinguished in Paris, all eyes are turning to Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics.

The host city has promised that the next Summer Games will be “car-free.”

For people who know Los Angeles, this seems overly optimistic. The car remains king in LA, despite growing public transit options.

When LA hosted the Games in 1932, it had an extensive public transportation system, with buses and an extensive network of electric streetcars. Today, the trolleys are long gone; riders say city buses don’t come on schedule, and bus stops are dirty. What happened?

This question fascinates me because I am a business professor who studies why society abandons and then sometimes returns to certain technologies, such as vinyl records, landline phones and metal coins. The demise of electric streetcars in Los Angeles and attempts to bring them back today vividly demonstrate the costs and challenges of such revivals.
Riding the Red and Yellow Cars

Transportation is a critical priority in any city, but especially so in Los Angeles, which has been a sprawling metropolis from the start.

In the early 1900s, railroad magnate Henry Huntington, who owned vast tracts of land around LA, started subdividing his holdings into small plots and building homes. In order to attract buyers, he also built a trolley system that whisked residents from outlying areas to jobs and shopping downtown.

By the 1930s, Los Angeles had a vibrant public transportation network, with over 1,000 miles of electric streetcar routes, operated by two companies: Pacific Electric Railway, with its “Red Cars,” and Los Angeles Railway, with its “Yellow Cars.”

The system wasn’t perfect by any means. Many people felt that streetcars were inconvenient and also unhealthy when they were jammed with riders. Moreover, streetcars were slow because they had to share the road with automobiles. As auto usage climbed and roads became congested, travel times increased.

Nonetheless, many Angelenos rode the streetcars – especially during World War II, when gasoline was rationed and automobile plants shifted to producing military vehicles.

Demise of public transit

The end of the war marked the end of the line for streetcars. The war effort had transformed oil, tire and car companies into behemoths, and these industries needed new buyers for goods from the massive factories they had built for military production. Civilians and returning soldiers were tired of rationing and war privations, and they wanted to spend money on goods such as cars.

After years of heavy usage during the war, Los Angeles’ streetcar system needed an expensive capital upgrade. But in the mid-1940s, most of the system was sold to a company called National City Lines, which was partly owned by the carmaker General Motors, the oil companies Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum, and the Firestone tire company.

These powerful forces had no incentive to maintain or improve the old electric streetcar system. National City ripped up tracks and replaced the streetcars with buses that were built by General Motors, used Firestone tires and ran on gasoline.

There is a long-running academic debate over whether self-serving corporate interests purposely killed LA’s streetcar system. Some researchers argue that the system would have died on its own, like many other streetcar networks around the world.

The controversy even spilled over into pop culture in the 1988 movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” which came down firmly on the conspiracy side.

What’s undisputed is that, starting in the mid-1940s, powerful social forces transformed Los Angeles so that commuters had only two choices: drive or take a public bus. As a result, LA became so choked with traffic that it often took hours to cross the city.

In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that people were putting refrigerators, desks and televisions in their cars to cope with getting stuck in horrendous traffic. A swath of movies, from “Falling Down” to “Clueless” to “La La Land,” have featured the next-level challenge of driving in LA.

Traffic was also a concern when LA hosted the 1984 Summer Games, but the Games went off smoothly. Organizers convinced over 1 million people to ride buses, and they got many trucks to drive during off-peak hours. The 2028 games, however, will have roughly 50% more athletes competing, which means thousands more coaches, family, friends and spectators. So simply dusting off plans from 40 years ago won’t work.

Olympic transportation plans

Today, Los Angeles is slowly rebuilding a more robust public transportation system. In addition to buses, it now has six light-rail lines – the new name for electric streetcars – and two subways. Many follow the same routes that electric trolleys once traveled. Rebuilding this network is costing the public billions, since the old system was completely dismantled.

Three key improvements are planned for the Olympics. First, LA’s airport terminals will be connected to the rail system. Second, the Los Angeles organizing committee is planning heavily on using buses to move people. It will do this by reassigning some lanes away from cars and making them available for 3,000 more buses, which will be borrowed from other locales.

Finally, there are plans to permanently increase bicycle lanes around the city. However, one major initiative, a bike path along the Los Angeles River, is still under an environmental review that may not be completed by 2028.

Car-free for 17 days

I expect that organizers will pull off a car-free Olympics, simply by making driving and parking conditions so awful during the Games that people are forced to take public transportation to sports venues around the city. After the Games end, however, most of LA is likely to quickly revert to its car-centric ways.

As Casey Wasserman, chair of the LA 2028 organizing committee, recently put it: “The unique thing about Olympic Games is for 17 days you can fix a lot of problems when you can set the rules – for traffic, for fans, for commerce – than you do on a normal day in Los Angeles.”

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From Paris To Los Angeles: How The City Is Preparing For The 2028 Olympics

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass holds the official Olympic flag returning to Los Angeles at the Los Angeles International Airport on Monday, August 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Doverganes)

BY JAIMIE DING and ANDREW DALTON

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s Los Angeles’ turn for the torch. Mayor Karen Bass accepted the Olympic flag at the Paris closing ceremony Sunday, before handing it off to a key representative of LA’s local business — Tom Cruise — who in a pre-recorded trek via motorcycle, plane and parachute kicked off the countdown to 2028.

The city will become the third in the world to host the games three times as it adds to the storied years of 1932 and 1984. Here’s a look forward and back in time at the Olympics in LA.

LA’s Olympic trilogy

Los Angeles got the 2028 games as a consolation prize when Paris was picked for 2024.

Back in 1932, LA hosted its first Olympics. The city was the only bidder for the games at a time marred by the Great Depression and the absence of several nations. Yet memorable sport moments came from athletes including American athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who won golds in the new women’s events of javelin and hurdles.

Financial and cultural success gave 1984 a reputation as the “good” Olympics” which made seemingly every major world city want their own.

Emphasizing both the modern and the classical with a hand from Hollywood, the games opened with decathlon champion Rafer Johnson lighting the torch, a guy in a jetpack descending into the Memorial Coliseum and theme music by “Star Wars” maestro John Williams.

With Eastern Bloc countries boycotting, the U.S. dominated. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton are among the athletes who became household names. A young Michael Jordan led the men’s basketball team to gold.

The games renewed, for a while, the global reputation of a city that had been perceived to be in decline.

“We want our games to be a modern games, youthful, full of the optimism that Southern California brings to the world and the globe,” Janet Evans, four-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming and chief athlete officer for the LA 2028 organizing committee, told The Associated Press in Paris.

Passing the torch

Bass, who arrives back in LA Monday, spent these games in Paris along with organizers and city officials, learning what it takes to host the world’s largest sporting event.

Joining her were LA28 Chairperson Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive, and LA councilmember Traci Park, chair of the city Olympic committee.

“As we’ve seen here in Paris, the Olympics are an opportunity to make transformative change,” Bass said at a press conference ahead of the closing ceremony.

Venues old and new, plus a swimming stadium

Amid a stadium-and-arena boom, LA will polish existing structures rather than erect new ones.

“It’s a no-build games,” Evans said.

After Paris’ innovative opening ceremony on the Seine River, LA plans to open with a traditional, stadium-based approach at SoFi Stadium in neighboring Inglewood that also incorporates the century-old Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles itself.

Home to two NFL teams, SoFi has hosted a Super Bowl and several Taylor Swift concerts since opening in 2020. It will become what organizers say is the largest Olympic swimming venue ever. Its opening ceremony role means swimming will come after track and field for the first time since 1972.

Intuit Dome, the soon-to-open Inglewood home of the NBA’s Clippers, would be the games’ newest major venue and is the planned home for Olympic basketball. The Lakers’ downtown Crypto.com Arena will host gymnastics.

The toxicity of swimming in the Seine became a serious issue in Paris. That could put renewed focus on the Long Beach area waterfront when it hosts marathon swimming and triathlon races. Its cleanliness history is mixed but its ocean waters got consistently high marks in a 2023 analysis by nonprofit Heal the Bay.

The Long Beach shore was home to the pre-recorded performances during Sunday’s ceremony of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, though it was easy to mistake for LA’s Venice Beach, where the journey of the flag begun by Cruise was shown ending moments earlier.

Trains, buses and traffic

A city that’s notoriously hard to traverse may seem like an odd fit for the Olympics, but it can work.

Bass said she plans to emulate the tactics of Tom Bradley, the mayor in 1984, whose traffic mitigations had some saying it was better than at non-Olympic times. They include asking local businesses to stagger workforce hours to reduce the number of cars on the road and allow work from home during the 17-day games.

Landing the Olympics under then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017 gave the city an unusually long lead time for planning.

While it’s no Paris Metro, LA has built a subway since its last Olympics, with lines running past major venues.

In 2018, the city planned an ambitious slate of 28 bus and rail projects to transform public transit. Some were scrapped but others moved forward, including the extension of a subway line to connect downtown Los Angeles with UCLA, the planned home of the Olympic Village.

Another high-profile project is the Inglewood People Mover, an automated, three-stop rail line past major Olympic venues. It initially received a commitment of $1 billion in federal funding, but opposition from Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters led to a $200 million reduction, the Los Angeles Times reported. It’s unclear whether the line will be completed by 2028.

Metro recently received $900 million in funding through an infrastructure spending package and grants from the Biden administration, of which $139 million will go directly toward improving transportation by 2028 and the goal of a “car-free” Olympics.

“The biggest challenge is not waiting to 2028, but really taking the opportunity between now and 2028 to help Angelenos and visitors alike reimagine the transportation network as something that will be their first choice,” Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins said.

Crime, safety and perception

While crime rates were considerably higher in 1984 than today, the countdown to 2028 comes as the issue has gotten increased attention and cast a social-media-amplified shadow.

The Olympics are designated as a national special security event, which makes the U.S. Secret Service the lead agency tasked with developing a security plan, supported by significant federal resources.

LA city and county law enforcement sent officers to Paris to observe, learn and assist as they prepare for their own 2028 games.

There are many more encampments on city streets than there were in 1984, and it’s unlikely LA will have solved its homeless crisis in the next four years. As the Paris games ended, California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to withhold funding from cities unable to clear encampments.

Ahead of the Games in Paris, organizers relocated thousands of unhoused people, a practice also used for the 2016 Rio de Janiero games and criticized by activists as “social cleansing.”

Tourists and finances

LA is the “next logical destination” for the Olympics, said Adam Burke, president and CEO of the LA Tourism and Convention Board. “LA has emerged as really one of the world’s sports capitals.”

First though, the city will host a FIFA World Cup event and U.S. Women’s Open in 2026 and another Super Bowl in 2027.

The city’s hotel industry has continued to see growth, adding 9,000 new hotel rooms in the past four years with more to come over the next four.

LA28 organizers are banking on ticket sales, sponsorships, payments from the International Olympic Committee and other revenue streams to cover the games’ $6.9 billion budget. The committee has brought in just over $1 billion toward a goal of $2.5 billion in domestic corporate sponsorships.

Associated Press Writer Noreen Nassir contributed from Paris.

Paris Closes The Olympics, And Los Angeles Turns To Tom Cruise For Its 2028 Mission

Tom Cruise is lowered into the stadium during the closing 2024 closing ceremony at the Stade de France, Sunday, August 11, 2024, in Saint Denis, France. (AP Photo/Martin Messner)

BY JOHN LEICESTER

SAINT-DENIS, FRANCE (AP) — Setting out to prove that topping Paris isn’t mission impossible, Los Angeles rolled out a skydiving Tom Cruise, Grammy winner Billie Eilish and other stars on Sunday as it took over Olympic hosting duties from the French capital, which closed out its 2024 Games just as they started — with joy and panache.

Capping two and a half extraordinary weeks of Olympic sports and emotion, Paris’ boisterous, star-studded closing ceremony in France’s national stadium mixed unbridled celebration with a somber call for peace from International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

Following in Paris’ footsteps in 2028 promises to be a challenge: It made spectacular use of its cityscape for its first Games in 100 years, with the Eiffel Tower and other iconic monuments becoming Olympic stars in their own right as they served as backdrops and venues for medal-winning feats.

But the City of Angels, like the City of Light, showed that it, too, holds some aces.

Cruise — in his Ethan Hunt persona — wowed by descending from the top of the stadium to electric guitar “Mission: Impossible” riffs. Once his feet were back on the ground — and after shaking hands with enthralled athletes — he took the Olympic flag from star gymnast Simone Biles, fixed it to the back of a motorcycle and roared out of the arena.

The appetite-whetting message was clear: Los Angeles 2028 promises to be an eye-opener, too.





Still, this was largely Paris’ night — its opportunity for one final party. And what a party it was. Thousands of athletes danced and sang the night away — reveling in the artistic show that celebrated Olympic themes and its firework flourishes.

Even Bach got the party bug, jokingly calling the Paris Games “Seine-sational” — a nod to the Seine River that, despite water quality concerns, staged Olympic triathlon and marathon swimming and the wacky and wonderful opening ceremony.

At what will be his last Games after announcing his intention to step down next year, Bach also made a somber appeal for ”a culture of peace” in a war-torn world.

“We know that the Olympic Games cannot create peace, but the Olympic Games can create a culture of peace that inspires the world,” he said. “Let us live this culture of peace every single day.”

Cruise then provided a change of gear.

After being lowered on a rope live from the roof’s giddy heights, Cruise drove his bike past the Eiffel Tower in a prerecorded segment, onto a plane and then skydived over the Hollywood Hills. Three circles added to the O’s of the famed Hollywood sign, creating five interlaced Olympic rings.

In the stadium, the athletes’ enthusiasm bubbled over when crowds of them rushed the stage at one point. Stadium announcements urged them to double back. Some stayed, creating an impromptu mosh pit around Grammy-winning French pop-rock band Phoenix as they played, before security and volunteers cleared the stage.

Multiple French athletes crowd-surfed. U.S. team members jumped up and down in their Ralph Lauren jackets.

On the stadium’s giant screens, Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, rapper Snoop Dogg — wearing pants with the Olympic rings after being a popular feature of the Paris Games — and Dr. Dre kept the party going in an prerecorded show from a California beach.

Each is a California native, including H.E.R., who sang the U.S. national anthem live at the Stade de France, crammed with more than 70,000 people.

The stadium crowd roared as French swimmer Léon Marchand, dressed in a suit and tie instead of the swim trunks he wore to win four golds, first collected the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.

Reappearing later in the stadium to spectators’ chants of “Léon, Léon,” Marchand then blew out the flame. The Summer Games were over.

Their next stop: LA in 2028.

The national stadium, France’s largest, was one of the targets of Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers who killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13, 2015. The joy and celebrations that swept Paris during the Games as Marchand and other French athletes racked up 64 medals — 16 of them gold — marked a major watershed in the city’s recovery from that night of terror.

“Paris became a party again and France found itself,” said Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris Games organizing committee.

The closing ceremony also saw the awarding of the last medals — each embedded with a chunk of the Eiffel Tower. Fittingly for the first Olympics that aimed for gender parity, they all went to women — the gold, silver and bronze medalists from the women’s marathon earlier Sunday.

The women’s marathon took the spot of the men’s race that traditionally closed out previous Games. The switch was part of efforts in Paris to make the Olympic spotlight shine more brightly on the sporting feats of women. Paris was also where women first made their Olympic debut, at the Games of 1900.

The U.S. team again topped the medal table, with 126 in all and 40 of them gold.

As a delicate pink sunset gave way to night, athletes marched into the stadium waving the flags of their 205 countries and territories — a display of global unity in a world gripped by global tensions and conflicts. The stadium screens carried the words, “Together, united for peace.”

A golden-shrouded figure dropped spider-like from the skies into a darkened world of smoke and swirling stars. Olympic symbols were celebrated, including the flag of Greece, birthplace of the ancient Games, and the five interlaced Olympic rings, lit up in white in the arena where tens of thousands of lights glittered like fireflies.

Now, the lights are out. But the memories of Paris’ special summer won’t dim anytime soon.

“We saw ourselves as a people of incorrigible grumblers,” Estanguet said. “We woke up in a country of wild fans who would not stop singing.”

AP reporters Noreen Nasir, Stephen Whyno, Tom Nouvian, Thomas Adamson and Megan Janetsky contributed from Paris.

AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

The French Baron Who Revived The Olympics Believed They Were More Than Sport – They Were A Religion Of Perfection And Peace

Perre de Coubertin

BY JEFFREY SCHOLES AND TERRY SHOEMAKER

Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, always envisioned the Games as much more than the sum of their parts. “Olympism,” as he coined it, was a new type of religion – one shorn of gods, yet transcendent all the same.

To Coubertin, honing an athlete’s body and mind for peak performance in a competition was a way of “realizing perfection.” And if the competition were nation vs. the world, held in varied host cities every four years, individual interest would be subordinated to national pride and a global synergy. Coubertin called this sport in the service of global harmony – nothing short of a new “religio athletae,” or “religion of athletics.”

Just two decades after the Games’ modern revival in 1896, Europe was torn apart by World War I, making the dangers of national rivalries all too apparent. And as Coubertin, a French baron and pacifist, wrote, “unbridled competition engenders even an atmosphere of jealousy, envy, vanity and mistrust.”

He was convinced that these baser instincts could be bridled, however, by a “regulator” that was “grandiose and strong.” Expressed through Olympism, the religion of athletics could regulate sports and national pride in a way that produced global harmony at one site every four years – a goal unachievable through politics or sectarian religion.

But the Games have seen no shortage of challenges over the past 100 years. As researchers who study religion and sport, we wonder whether Coubertin’s lofty ideal of the “religio athletae” is still in play – if it ever was.

Ancient inspiration

Coubertin’s desire to resurrect the Olympic Games after 1,500 years of dormancy was prompted by his concerns about challenges and changes in the early 20th century. He believed, for example, that industrialization was rendering young men physically and morally weak.

Meanwhile, with the rising explanatory power of science, traditional religion was relied on less and less as a panacea for the world’s ills. A new world was dawning, and he hoped Olympism would act as a corrective. A rather obsessed aficionado of ancient Greece since childhood, Coubertin saw the ancient Games as containing ingredients that, if modernized, could uniquely respond to some of the big problems of his day.

Specifically, he looked back to the ancient Greek ideal of mind and body in harmony, which competitors expressed every four years in the Greek town of Olympia, the sanctuary for Zeus. The Games were open to Greek men – women and enslaved people could not participate – and matches could be brutally fierce.

By making this ideal the foundation of the modern Games, Coubertin hoped to infuse them with a sense of balance, proportion and reverence. The Olympics would bring enchantment from ancient Greece into the 20th century – symbolized, to this day, by the relay of the torch from Olympia to the opening ceremony.

Not all of his attitudes about the ancient Games were glowing. Coubertin also believed they had been “chaotic,” “impractical and bothersome,” as well as prone to excess and corruption. He worried that the modern Olympics could end up similarly.

At the same time, he had faith that the spirit of the Games could be a “regulator” on the kinds of excessive behavior that sports can invite. At ancient Olympia, Coubertin wrote, “vulgar competition was transformed and in a sense sanctified” out of respect for bodies and minds working toward the perfection represented in the gods.

The Games today

The International Olympic Committee has repeated Coubertin’s desires of forging unity and peace through athleticism. Current IOC President Thomas Bach said, “The shared goal of the U.N. and the IOC is to make the world a better and more peaceful place. For the IOC, this means putting sport at the service of the peaceful development of humanity.”

Indeed, it’s nearly impossible to think of another event, other than sports, that brings together as many countries from all over the world to compete under the same rules without the threat of violence.

Every two years billions of people experience this welling of both national and global pride, as the five interlocking, multicolored Olympic rings are meant to symbolize. And while the Greek gods – or any god, for that matter – are not featured, a kind of civil religion still binds athletes and spectators to the “global congregation” that the Olympics is designed to generate.

What Coubertin could not foresee was the role that money and politics would play – hearkening back to the “vulgar competition” that he believed had undermined the ancient Games. Cities vying to host the Olympics often launch projects that damage the environment and local neighborhoods, and countries have been accused of “sportswashing”: using the feel-good publicity of sports to distract from a deplorable human rights record. For example, the Nazi government famously used the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as a showcase for its racial theory of ethnic German superiority.

In other words, the Olympics have been a vehicle for both unethical behavior and international antagonism – in clear violation of Coubertin’s vision.

Perhaps Olympism was always a pipe dream; perhaps sport never possessed the power to craft and sustain a “religio athletae.” We would argue that the episodic rise of healthy national pride and largely unknown amateur athletes is still something for which to admire the Olympics. Yet it’s unclear how the good of the Games can generate an inspiring new “regulator” that transcends individual performance and national medal counts – or whether it’s even possible.

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At The Olympics, Athletes Show Guts, Glory – And A Lot Of Ink, Including Tattoos That Profess Their Faith

BY GUSTAVO MORELLO

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY,

BOSTON COLLEGE

This has been a wonderful summer if you follow sports: tennis championships, end-of-season tournaments and soccer’s European Championship and Copa America – all leading up to the most global event of all, the Olympics.

The Olympic Games began as a religious celebration in ancient Greece, with competitions to honor their gods. But the Olympics declined once the Roman Empire replaced Greek power in the Mediterranean; the final blow came from the Christian Emperor Theodosius I, who saw the Games as a stage for paganism.

At the end of the 19th century, the modern iteration of the Games began – minus religion. This time, they were secular, with flags and patriotism replacing religious worship.

But religion is still easy to see at the Games today, including right on the athletes’ bodies.

At the Summer Games, in particular, lots of skin is on display, and many athletes use it as a testament to faith. There’s Anthony Davis – usually playing for the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers – with a cross and praying hands across his forearm. Fellow basketball pro Jayson Tatum, of the Boston Celtics, has a collection of religious tattoos, including “God’s will” and “Proverbs 3:5-6” across his back.

As a scholar of religion who writes about tattoos, I’m often asked whether Christianity disapproves of tattoos. According to the Bible, didn’t God reject them?

The answer is not so simple.

Biblical ban?

The first problem in exploring the history of tattoos, religious or not, is what to call them.

Before the European explorers’ voyages to the Pacific in the 18th century – where they encountered Maori facial tattooing, known as “ta moko” – there was no specific word for tattoos in Western languages. Latin, Greek and their derivatives used words that can have many meanings, such as “mark” or “letter.” When the word “tattoo” appears in English versions of Jewish and Christian scriptures, it is more of an interpretation than an exact translation.

Regardless of what you call body modifications, the Hebrew Scriptures suggest that the people of Israel initially despised them, including tattoos and ear and nose piercings. In Leviticus 19:28, God prohibits mourners from funeral rites that involve self-mutilation to honor the dead – the Bible’s only explicit prohibition of tattoos.

More broadly, this rule appears amid a list of forbidden activities meant to differentiate the Jews from other groups of people and their gods. In some cultures of the ancient Middle East, tattoos had a religious meaning, such as being used in fertility and funeral rites. The author of Leviticus seems to be saying, “If what you want is God’s protection, do not get haircuts, shaves or tattoos.”

Saved by the ‘X’

However, many other texts in the Bible have a more favorable view of bodily markings, including decorations like earrings. In the Book of Ezekiel, for example, God instructs the prophet to mark an “X” on the foreheads of pious people in Jerusalem so that they may be saved from the slaying of the unrighteous ones.

In one of the prophet Isaiah’s visions, during the Jewish exile in Babylon, he prophesies, “One shall say, ‘I am the LORD’s,’ another shall be named after Jacob, and this one shall write on his hand, ‘The LORD’s,’ and receive the name Israel.” This verse seems to invoke the Babylonian custom of tattooing servants. Similarly, Isaiah is portraying Jews as loyal servants of the Lord, with no other master.

Another text from the Book of Isaiah describes God himself as tattooed, out of love for his people: “See, upon the palms of my hands I have engraved you; your walls are ever before me.” Faithful to Israel, God has tattooed the walls of Jerusalem on his hands – a reminder of his abiding love for the holy city.

The first Christians

Tattoos were not uncommon during the early days of Christianity. The Roman Empire used them to brand some enslaved people and convicts, including persecuted Christians.

There is no prohibition on tattoos in the New Testament. Around A.D. 50, St. Paul wrote, “Let no one make troubles for me; for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body.” While most biblical scholars accept the text as a metaphor of Paul’s suffering for Christ, some think it refers to the tattoo of a cross. Paul is “reversing” the power of the tattoo: transforming something degrading to a sign of membership and pride.

There are records of Christians tattooing themselves with signs of their faith, including the image of a fish, one of the first Christian symbols. Christians in Syria and Egypt, who began tattooing crosses during the Roman Empire, continue to do so today. Some Eastern Orthodox churches, such as Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian Christians, incorporated cross tattoos into baptism.

Constantine I, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, established in 316 that a person condemned to gladiator school or to labor in the mines should not be tattooed on the face, but on the hands or calves. His edict reflected a Christian belief that the face reflected the image of God and should not be damaged. Evidently, the problem was not the tattooing itself, but the location.

Sacred systems

Among Olympic athletes – our contemporary gladiators – tattoos still say something. Each one is a meaningful investment of skin, time and money. And they cover part of their bodies: the tools athletes use to compete, and the vehicles for their passion.

Skateboarder Nyjah Huston, for example, sports more than 130 tattoos. Among them, one on the left of his stomach says “Blessed” with praying hands; there is a hamsa, a palm-shaped symbol popular in many Jewish and Muslim cultures, on his right index finger.

Of course, many Olympic tattoos are not religious in a traditional sense. However, they do represent what is sacred or meaningful for these athletes. Their significance depends on both design and location – such as whether they are easy for passersby to see, or more private. Swimmer Caleb Dressel’s elaborated tattoo of an eagle on his left shoulder – inspired by the book of Isaiah – is visible at all times he is competing.

Not all tattoos have such significance, but for many, ink is a way to communicate what is sacred to them – another item to look for while enjoying the Olympics.

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France’s Headscarf Ban In The 2024 Summer Olympics Reflects A Narrow View Of National Identity, Writes A Scholar Of European Studies

Basketball player Diaba Konate in the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament at McCarthey Athletic Center in Spokane, Wash. Steph Chambers/Getty Images

BY ARMIN LANGER

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN 

STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris have sparked a discussion about whether female Muslim athletes who wear a headscarf should be allowed to compete.

In September 2023, the International Olympic Committee, upholding freedom of religious and cultural expression for all athletes, announced that athletes participating in the 2024 Paris Games can wear a hijab without any restriction.

French athletes, however, are bound by France’s strict separation of religion from the state, called laïcité. French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said that French athletes would be barred from wearing a hijab during the Paris games to respect this commitment to the principle of laïcité.

Human rights organizations argued that such a ban infringes upon the religious freedoms of Muslim athletes, perpetuating discrimination and marginalization. The United Nations human rights office stated that “no one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear, or not wear.”

This debate highlights the conflict between laïcité and the right to express one’s religious beliefs. As a scholar of European studies, I know about laïcité’s impact on sports, politics and society in general. In my view, laïcité, which historically upheld individual rights and freedoms, increasingly denies minority rights today, as seen in the ban on French athletes wearing hijabs at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Laïcité yesterday and today

Before the 1789 revolution, France was an absolute monarchy, where religion and the state were deeply intertwined.

The close relationship between the French monarchy and the Catholic Church began when King Charlemagne was crowned by the pope in 800 A.D. Over the centuries, the church became very powerful, owning land and controlling education and health care. It formed strong political alliances, with many nobles holding top positions within the church.

After the French Revolution succeeded and the monarchy was abolished, the revolutionaries still resented religion for its long relationship with the crown. They saw the church as a source of unfairness in society and wanted to reduce religion’s influence in public life and push their ideas of freedom, fairness and unity.

They nationalized church properties and introduced secularism to create a separation between religious and governmental affairs. Since then, France has maintained laïcité as one of the republic’s core values.

The evolution of laïcité in France coincides with significant demographic shifts in the latter half of the 20th century. As France transformed into a diverse nation with various religions and ethnicities, including a significant Muslim population, the interpretation and application of laïcité faced new challenges. With millions migrating from former French colonies in northern and western Africa in search of economic opportunities, France now hosts the largest Muslim community in Europe, comprising about 10% of its population. This demographic change has sparked debates about the role of religion in public life and the extent to which laïcité should accommodate religious diversity.

While laïcité was originally introduced alongside principles such as freedom and equality, as times changed, so did its meaning. Initially, laïcité meant keeping religion separate from the state. Lately, however, it is often interpreted to mean that citizens should refrain from showing their religious identities in public.

This shift has led to bans on religious symbols in public schools and spaces, disproportionately affecting Muslim women who wear veils.

A debate about the Olympics – and beyond

Activists and scholars have argued that today’s laïcité poses a threat to both human rights and religious freedom. In their view, it promotes a narrow view of republican values and national identity, rejecting diversity and unfairly targeting Muslim women who wear headscarves.

Laïcité can be seen as discriminatory because it often treats Christian customs as just part of everyday culture, while it treats visible signs of other religions, such as the hijab worn by some Muslim women, as unacceptable. This means Christian symbols and traditions are more easily accepted, but non-Christian ones are often not allowed.

It is also important to note that Christian traditions focus mostly on beliefs, which are private, while Islamic and Jewish traditions emphasize practices, such as wearing headscarves, that are visible. This means laïcité affects people differently, often more strictly targeting visible signs of non-Christian religion.

A 2023 survey showed that almost 80% of French Muslims believed that their country’s secular laws are discriminatory. Research shows that laïcité disproportionately affects Muslim girls from marginalized communities, perpetuating social inequalities. For example, the ban on headscarves in schools forces Muslim girls to choose between their education and their religious beliefs, leading to feelings of exclusion and isolation. This policy can also hinder their academic performance and personal development, limiting their future opportunities.

Banning hijab for players

French Muslim athletes have faced challenges on the field for a long time. For example, in 2023, the French Soccer Federation decided not to adjust meal and practice timings during Ramadan, even though it occurred during a break when there was no competition.

This decision effectively prevented Muslim players from fasting and led to notable departures, such as Lyon midfielder Mahamadou Diawara leaving the France under-19s camp. Other French players, too, left French professional sports. Basketball player Diaba Konate also opted to pursue her career in the United States because of the French ban on wearing the hijab.

In 2004, France prohibited religious symbols in public schools, including the hijab, Jewish yarmulkes, Sikh turbans and large Christian crosses.

The nonprofit Human Rights Watch criticized it as an unjustified restriction on religious practice. In 2010, France extended the ban to face-covering headgear in public places, including the burqa and niqab, which are garments worn by some Muslim women that cover the face and body. Last year, France banned the abaya in schools.

A ban on cultural pluralism?

The hijab debate extends beyond the realm of sports, touching upon broader issues of identity and belonging in multicultural societies. For many Muslim women, the hijab is not just clothing – it is an expression of religious identity and empowerment.

Banning it from the Olympics could be seen as limiting their freedom of expression and denying their right to fully engage in society while staying true to their religious and cultural backgrounds.

France’s ban on religious symbols in official sports activities highlights the struggle to balance religious freedom with national values. This becomes especially complicated in the Olympics, where athletes’ individual expressions clash with their roles as representatives of their countries.

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Does Hosting The Olympics, The World Cup Or Other Major Sports Events Really Pay Off?

BY IVAN SAVIN

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF QUANTITATIVE ANALYTICS

RESEARCH FELLOW AT ICTA, UAB

ESCP BUSINESS SCHOOL

After a long battle, Paris’s beloved bouquinistes will be staying put this summer. The decision, announced on 13 February by the French government, came after considerable public backlash to the police prefecture’s original plan to move part of the iconic Seine booksellers elsewhere for the inauguration of the Olympics Games on 26 July.

Meanwhile, less than six months away from the event, Parisians continue to grumble over a lack of consultations with locals, warnings of gridlocked traffic, closed metro stations, extensive video surveillance and other grievances. So for host countries, what was the point of the Olympics, again?

In academia, the debate about the potential positive and negative effects of large-scale sporting events is ongoing. Although these events are often associated with substantial economic losses, the long-term benefits are the main argument in favour of hosting them. These include the development of material and soft infrastructure such as hotels, restaurants or parks. Big games can also help put the host region on the map as an attractive place for sports and cultural events, and inspire a better entrepreneurial climate.

The pros and the cons of big sporting events?

The cost of these benefits, as the Parisians have realised, is steep. Host countries appear to suffer from increased tax burdens, low returns on public investments, high construction costs, and onerous running cost of facilities after the event. Communities can also be blighted by noise, pollution, and damage to the environment, while increased criminal activity and potential conflicts between locals and visitors can take a toll on their quality of life. As a result, in the recent past several major cities, including Rome and Hamburg, withdrew their bids to host the games.

A common feature of the economics of large-scale sporting events is that our expectations of them are more optimistic than what we make of them once they have taken place. Typically, expenditure tends to tip over the original budget, while the revenue-side indicators (such as the number of visitors) are rarely achieved.

When analysing the effect of hosting large-scale sporting events on tourist visits, it is important to take into consideration both the positive and negative components of the overall effect. While positive effects may be associated with visitors, negative effects may arise when “regular” tourists refuse to visit the location due to the event. This might be because of overloaded infrastructure, sharp increases in accommodation costs, and inconveniences associated with overcrowding or raucous or/and violent visitors. On top of that, reports of poverty or crime in the global media can actually undermine the location’s attractiveness.

When big sporting events crowd out regular tourists

In an article published in the Journal of Sports Economics with Igor Drapkin and Ilya Zverev, I assess the effects of hosting large-scale sporting events, such as Winter and Summer Olympics plus FIFA World Cups, on international tourist visits. We utilise a comprehensive dataset on flow of tourists covering the world’s largest destination and origin countries between 1995 and 2019. As a first step, we built an econometric model that effectively predicts the flow of tourists between any pair of countries in our data. Subsequently we compared the predicted tourist inflow in a hypothetical scenario where no large-scale sporting event would have taken place with the actual figures. If the actual figures exceed the predicted ones, we consider the event to have a net positive impact. Otherwise, we consider that it had a “crowding out” effect on “regular” tourists. While conducting this analysis, we distinguished between short-term (i.e., focusing just on the year of the event) and mid-term (year of the event plus three subsequent years).

Our results show that the effects of large-scale sporting events vary a lot across host countries: The World Cup in Japan and South Korea 2002 and South Africa 2010 were associated with a distinct increase in tourist arrivals, whereas all other World Cups were either neutral or negative. Among the Summer Olympics, China in 2008 is the only case with a significant positive effect on tourist inflows. The effects of the other four events (Australia 2000, Greece 2004, Great Britain 2012, and Brazil 2016) were found to be negative in the short- and medium-term. As for the Winter Olympics, the only positive case is Russia in 2014. The remaining five events had a negative impact except the one-year neutral effect for Japan 1998.

Following large-scale sporting events, host countries are therefore typically less visited by tourists. Out of the 18 hosting countries studied, 11 saw tourist numbers decline over four years, and three did not experience a significant change.

The case for cautious optimism

Our research indicates that the positive effect of hosting large-scale sporting events on tourist inflows is, at best, moderate. While many tourists are attracted by FIFA World Cups and Olympic games, the crowding-out effect of “regular” tourists is strong and often underestimated. This implies that tourists visiting for an event like the Olympics typically dissuade those who would have come for other reasons. Thus, efforts to attract new visitors should be accompanied by efforts to retain the already existing ones.

Large-scale sporting events should be considered as part of a long-term policy for promoting a territory to tourists rather than a standalone solution. Revealingly, our results indicate that it is easier to get a net increase in tourist inflows in countries that are less frequent destinations for tourists – for example, those in Asia or Africa. By contrast, the United States and Europe, both of which are traditionally popular with tourists, have no single case of a net positive effect. Put differently, the large-scale sporting events in Asia and Africa helped promote their host countries as tourist destinations, making the case for the initial investment. In the US and Europe, however, those in the last few decades brought little return, at least in terms of tourist inflow.

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US Law Passed To Stop Doping Nets Its 1st Guilty Plea

FILE - Blessing Okagbare, of Nigeria, races in a women's 200 meter heat at the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 30, 2019. A man charged with providing banned substances to Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare and another athlete pleaded guilty Monday, May 8, 2023, marking the first conviction under a landmark law designed to target wide-ranging doping schemes across the globe. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, file)

BY EDDIE PELLS

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK (AP)--A man charged with providing banned substances to Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare and another athlete pleaded guilty Monday, marking the first conviction under a landmark U.S. law designed to target wide-ranging doping schemes across the globe.

Eric Lira pleaded guilty for his role in helping Olympic athletes obtain performance-enhancing substances before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

The U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Damian Williams, called the plea “a watershed moment for international sport.”

“Craven efforts to undermine the integrity of sport subverts the purpose of the Olympic games: to showcase athletic excellence through a level playing field,” he said in a news release. “Lira’s efforts to pervert that goal will not go unpunished.”

Williams’ office did not provide any information about the terms of the plea by the 43-year-old kinesiologist and naturopathic doctor from El Paso, Texas. Violations of the law, called the Rodchenkov Act and named after the former Moscow lab director-turned-whistleblower in the Russian doping scandal, carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

An indictment unsealed last year revealed texts between Lira and Okagbare, who is serving an 11-year ban for taking human-growth hormone and the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) and also for failing to cooperate with the investigation.

The news release said a second athlete receiving drugs from Lira competed for Switzerland and also has been banned for PEDs. Williams’ office said Lira advised the athletes they should blame their positive tests on contaminated meat “knowing full well that the drug tests had accurately detected the presence of banned, performance-enhancing drugs.”

The case stemmed from information whistleblowers provided to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which worked with the FBI to investigate Lira’s system of channeling drugs from Central and South America to the athletes and others.

USADA CEO Travis Tygart said the law, passed in 2020, is especially important considering the U.S. will host the World Cup in 2026 and Summer Olympics in 2028. He thanked the FBI and Williams’ office for pursuing the case.

“The leadership they have shown in this matter sends a powerful message that the rules of sport matter and that the U.S. is committed to rooting out and penalizing fraudulent activity that robs clean athletes and the public,” Tygart said.

International sports regulators, including the World Anti-Doping Agency and the IOC, have criticized key elements of the Rodchenkov Act. In a letter WADA sent to the Senate in 2020 to lobby for changes in the bill, it said that it supported the objectives of the legislation but argued the law would lead to a “chaotic World Anti-Doping system with no legal predictability.”

Proponents of the bill said it brings another layer of accountability to a system that has failed over the years, including allowing the Russians to run roughshod over the rulebook in a scandal that has sullied the Olympic movement for longer than a decade.

They also argue that because the bill is geared toward stopping widespread doping conspiracies, and not necessarily individual cheaters, athletes won’t be singled out for criminal liability in the U.S. simply for taking performance enhancers.

More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

US Sprinter, Olympic Medalist Tori Bowie Dies At 32

FILE - Former Southern Mississippi star and Olympic gold medalist Tori Bowie smiles during halftime of a college football game between Louisiana Tech and Southern Mississippi on Friday, Nov. 25, 2016, in Hattiesburg, Miss. Tori Bowie, the sprinter who won three Olympic medals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, has died, her management company and USA Track and Field said Wednesday, May 3, 2023. Bowie was 32. She was found Tuesday in her Florida home. No cause of death was given. (Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American via AP, File)

BY PAT GRAHAM, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tori Bowie, the sprinter who won three Olympic medals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, has died. She was 32.

Bowie’s death was announced Wednesday by her management company and USA Track and Field. No cause of death was given.

“USATF is deeply saddened by the passing of Tori Bowie, a three-time Olympic medalist and two-time world champion,” USA Track and Field CEO Max Siegel said in a statement. “A talented athlete, her impact on the sport is immeasurable, and she will be greatly missed.”

According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Orlando, Florida, deputies responded Tuesday afternoon to a home in the area “for a well-being check of a woman in her 30s who had not been seen or heard from in several days.”

The sheriff’s office wrote that a woman, “tentatively identified as Frentorish “Tori” Bowie (DOB: 8/27/1990), was found dead in the home. There were no signs of foul play.”

Growing up in Sandhill, Mississippi, Bowie was coaxed into track as a teenager and quickly rose up the ranks as a sprinter and long jumper. She attended Southern Mississippi, where she swept the long jump NCAA championships at the indoor and outdoor events in 2011.


Bowie turned in an electric performance at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where she won silver in the 100 and bronze in the 200. She then ran the anchor leg on a 4x100 team with Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix and English Gardner to take gold.

A year later, she won the 100 meters at the 2017 world championships in London. She also helped the 4x100 team to gold.

“She was a very enthusiastic, sparkling personality,” said track coach Craig Poole, who worked with Bowie early in her career and again later. “She was really fun to work with.”

The track and field community mourned the loss of Bowie on social media. Jamaican sprint sensation Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce posted on Twitter: “My heart breaks for the family of Tori Bowie. A great competitor and source of light. Your energy and smile will always be with me. Rest in peace.”

Added U.S. hurdler Lolo Jones: “Too young. Gutted to hear about Tori Bowie. Incredible talent. A beautiful runner. I pray for the comfort of her family, thank your for blessing us with her. The running community mourns an incredible loss.”

Brittney Reese, a three-time Olympic medalist in the long jump, wrote: “I’m so heartbroken over this ... You have made a lot of us proud thank you for representing our state of Mississippi like you did ... RIP!”

Bowie was taken in by her grandmother as an infant after she was left at a foster home. She considered herself a basketball player and only reluctantly showed up for track, but Bowie was a fast learner, becoming a state champion in the 100, 200 and long jump before going to college.

Her first major international medal was a 100-meter bronze at worlds in 2015. After winning, she said, “my entire life my grandmother told me I could do whatever I set my mind to.”

In a post on Twitter, Icon Management included a picture of Bowie holding up her hands in the shape of a heart. The management company wrote: “We’ve lost a client, dear friend, daughter and sister. Tori was a champion…a beacon of light that shined so bright! We’re truly heartbroken and our prayers are with the family and friends.”

AP National Writer Eddie Pells contributed to this report.

More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Nigeria's First Bobsled Team Running For Pride And Legacy

Seun Adigun

NEW YORK (AP) — Seun Adigun told herself her athletic career was done after she ran her last race at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. But for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to tell the world.

Three years later, she realized: Adigun wasn’t retiring — she was readying for a new sport. And her years competing as a 100-meter hurdler were great preparation what would come next.

“It was the speed and the power and the strength that I needed to be able to be a successful bobsled athlete,” she said.

Adigun, 31, soon convinced fellow former runners Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga to join the team as brakemen. But they wouldn’t just be newcomers to the sport.

Next month, the trio will represent Nigeria as the country fields its first-ever bobsled team at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. The team is also a first, men’s or women’s, for the entire continent of Africa.

Yes, they get the comparisons to “Cool Runnings” — the 1993 film based on the true story of the Jamaica’s first bobsled team, which was male, who competed in the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Canada — and say it’s a legacy they embrace and a following they hope to emulate.

But the peppy pioneers, all American-born and whose parents emigrated from Nigeria, said they also look forward to representing a positive story about their motherland.

“Nigerians are so excited to see the country being represented,” said Adigun, a Chicago native who is also a three-time national track champion for Nigeria. “I realized exactly what was a void from the country of Nigeria, from the continent of Africa, and for women in general being represented.”

Onwumere, 26, agreed, adding: “To be the first to do anything is, I think, it’s just something that you can’t really explain.”

Their story will likely take on added meaning next month, after President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Africa’s “shithole countries.”

Their journey to South Korea has also been a fast one. Three years ago, the team was little more than an idea, a “crazy but amazing journey,” said Adigun, the driver in role and personality who also helped recruit and coach Onwumere, who hails from Dallas, at their alma mater, the University of Houston.

Once her teammates were on board, official Olympic rules required them to operate under a national governing body. None existed.

The Bobsled and Skeleton Federation of Nigeria was formed. A GoFund Me campaign was created in 2016, and the team raised more than $75,000 in 14 months to pay for necessities like helmets, uniforms, travel and their first sled — a wooden vessel affectionately named “The Maeflower.” They began practicing in Houston, without snow.

The team’s popularity soon attracted Visa and Under Armour as sponsors. To qualify for the Winter Games, the women had to complete five races. They met their goal in November.

Along the way, their energy and enthusiasm has attracted attention in the U.S. and Nigeria. In December, they appeared on “The Ellen Show,” and last week, tennis icon Serena Williams retweeted their Under Armour Olympics ad.

The team said they’re excited to walk into the stadium in Pyeongchang next month and have been working hard to be competitive as rookies among a pool of talented and experienced bobsledders. Their main goal is to be an example for their country and for women in the sport.

A medal is almost too much to think of, said Omeoga, 26, who ran track at the University of Minnesota.

“That actually has never even crossed my mind yet,” she said. “I’m just taking things one day at a time: Don’t get too ahead of yourself, don’t get too behind yourself, don’t sell yourself short on anything.”

Critics Blasts Rio's World Cup, Olympic Evictions

Trash fills an area in the Favela do Metro slum outside Maracana stadium where some homes have been demolished and residents evicted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Some residents in this slum were evicted from their homes two years ago for the area to be renovated for this year's World Cup and 2016 Olympics, but people reoccupied the homes and are fighting to stay.

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL (AP) — With her family of six living in five different houses scattered across the city, Dalvaneide Pequeno do Nascimento longs for the days when her whole clan shared the same roof.

Nascimento, her husband and children were among the more than 230 families forced out of their homes in Vila Recreio II, a Rio de Janeiro slum that was razed three years ago to make way for the Transoeste expressway connecting the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood, the main hub for the 2016 Olympics, with the western outskirts of Rio.

It's just one of a slew of urban renewal efforts launched ahead of this year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, works igniting a sweeping transformation of Rio after decades of neglect since Brazil's capital was moved to Brasilia in 1960. Officials are using the events as catalysts for expanded metro lines, roads, airport renovations and other works. Critics say poor residents such as Nascimento are paying the price and estimate some 100,000 people have been evicted or face removals to make way for the projects.

"The city has become the object of the big business, the big interests behind the mega-events," said Marcelo Chalreo, who heads the human rights commission of the Rio chapter of Brazil's bar association. "In the name of the (sporting) events, now everything has to be pretty and nice looking."
Nascimento said city officials presented her and her husband, bricklayer Jucelio de Souza, with a simple choice: Accept a lump-sum compensation for their house, be given an apartment in a distant housing project or walk away with nothing. With Rio's real estate market among the hottest in the Americas and even homes in many slums fetching upward of $50,000, the city's compensation offer of just over $2,300 was grossly inadequate, Nascimento said.

Scared of being left homeless, the couple chose the apartment and were assigned a unit in a housing project in the distant suburb of Campo Grande. Inaugurated in 2011, the Condominio Oiti project, a grouping of beige four-story towers that now houses nearly 200 families originally hailing from slums throughout the city, is 35 miles (60 kilometers) from Rio de Janeiro's center, and prohibitively far from the upscale home where she works as a nanny.

"It's a nightmare," said Nascimento, whose weathered, lined face belies her 36 years, 16 of them spent in the Vila Recreio II slum. "There's nothing here, no work, no hospitals, no public transport, nothing. They forced us out of our houses and dropped us here in the middle of nowhere."

City officials have in the past acknowledged that some 15,000 families were resettled, but insist the moves were done to remove people from areas prone to deadly mudslides and had nothing do with the World Cup or Olympics. The office of Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes confirmed that in a statement, saying it "is not and will not carry out any resettlements" connected to the World Cup.

For coming Olympics preparations, however, city officials said they planned to resettle 278 families living on land that's part of the Olympic Village. Local organizers for the World Cup didn't respond to requests for comment, while Olympic organizers confirmed the removals near the Olympic village.
Amnesty International Brazil paints a different picture, saying 19,200 families in and round Rio have been pushed out of their homes since 2009. An advocacy group for affected slum residents called the Popular Committee for the World Cup and Olympics estimates that 100,000 people have or will be moved.

Evictions and the Olympics have long gone hand-in-hand, and even the worst-case scenario for Rio involves far less than the 1 million believed to have been moved for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 or what some rights groups estimate were the 720,000 people displaced ahead of the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea.

Officials have said all removals in Rio have been carried out fairly, with those evicted being offered a wide range of housing options. Advocacy groups and those who have lost their homes, however, tell a different story.

"The city's removal policy is disastrous because it's taking these pockets of poverty and pushing them out to the furthest limits of the city, thus making vulnerable people that much vulnerable," said Renato Cosentino, a member of the Popular Committee.

For Nascimento's husband Souza, in fact, the family's eviction has put more obstacles in the way of an already difficult life. The distance that separates their new home from the jobs, schools and hospitals of central Rio has wrenched the family apart. Since their 2011 move, Nascimento sleeps five nights a week at her employers' house. Otherwise, her commute would gobble up at least six hours a day, its cost taking a major bite out of her $500 monthly salary. For similar reasons, her husband shells out $190 a month for a tiny rental apartment close to his job. One of Nascimento's youngest children lives with her mother and another with a close friend, while her two teenage boys live alone in the housing project.

"We were working hard and getting ahead in life and then this happens and it sets us not even back to where we started, but way back before the starting point," said Souza, his sunglasses failing to conceal the tears streaming down his face. "I would give everything just to have my little plot of land back and my family whole again."

Follow Jenny Barchfield on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jennybarchfield

Blessing Okagbare Breaks African Women's 100 Meters Record

Nigeria's Blessing Okagbare breaks the African Women's 100 Meters Record with a 10.86 seconds winning time Saturday, July 27, 2013, and celebrates 1st Place during Day 2 of the Sainsbury Anniversary Games in London at The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Image: Harry Engels/Getty

Highlights of Africans at the 2012 London Olympic Games

MEDALS COUNT: Kenya: Total Medals: 9 (2 Gold, 3 Silver, and 4 Bronze); Ethiopia: Total Medals: 7 (3 Gold, 1 Silver and 3 Bronze); South Africa: Total Medals 6 (3 Gold, 2 Silver and 1 Bronze); Tunisia: Total Medals: 3 (1 Gold, 1 Silver and 1 Bronze); Egypt: Total Medals: 2 (2 Silver); Algeria: Total Medals: 1 (1 Dold); Gabon: Total Medals: 1 (1 Silver); Botswana: Total Medals: 1 (1 Silver), and Morocco with 0ne bronze medal.

David Lekuta Rudisha, Kenya, wins the Men's 800m Final in a World Record time of 1:40.91 at the Olympic Stadium, Olympic Park, during the London 2012 Olympic games. London, UK. 9th August 2012. Photo Tim Clayton

Ezekiel Kemboi of Kenya celebrates winning the Men's 3000m Steeplechase with Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad of France who came second during the athletics at the Olympic Stadium as part of the 2012 London Olympic Summer Games in London, UK on August 5th 2012. Photo: Visionhaus/Ben Radford

Meseret Defar, Ethiopia, winning the Gold Medal in the Women's 1500m Final with Vivian Jepkemoi Cheruiyot, Kenya, winning Silver and Tirunesh Dibaba, Ethiopia winning Bronze at the Olympic Stadium, Olympic Park, during the London 2012 Olympic games. London, UK. 10th August 2012. Photo: Tim Clayton

Uganda's Stephen Kiprotich, center, celebrates after receiving his medal as he stands alongside Kenya's Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich, right, and, Kenya's Abel Kirui, left, during the medal ceremony for the men's marathon during the Closing Ceremony at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2012, in London. Stephen Kiprotich won gold, Abel Kirui silver and Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich bronze. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Women's 5000-meter gold medalist from Ethiopia, Meseret Defar, center, poses with Kenya's silver medalist Vivian Jepkemoi Cheruiyot, left, and Ethiopia's bronze medalist Tirunesh Dibaba, right, during the athletics in the Olympic Stadium at the 2012 Summer Olympics, London, Friday, Aug. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Ethiopia's Meseret Defar, left, reacts as she crosses the finish line to win gold ahead of Kenya's Vivian Jepkemoi Cheruiyot, center, and Ethiopia's Tirunesh Dibaba, right, in the women's 5000-meter final during the athletics in the Olympic Stadium at the 2012 Summer Olympics, London, Friday, Aug. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)