After many volatile weeks, Rio's leaders aim for clean, robust games

RIO DE JANEIRO >> Should a collective sigh of relief echo across Maracana Stadium when the cauldron is lit at Friday night’s opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games, look no further than the VIP section.

There, officials from the Inteational Olympic Committee, Rio organizing committee and Brazilian govement — not to mention NBC — will finally allow themselves to stop holding their breaths after the ugliest run-up to any Olympics in history.

The suits will allow themselves a brief moment of relief should the cauldron actually work, no small feat given the embarrassing revelation that in recent months, Rio organizers couldn’t pay the utility bills or that exploding toilets still seem to outnumber light bulbs in some sections of the Olympic Village.

But the IOC and Rio organizers also will indulge themselves in the hope that the Olympic flame will finally shine a light on the field of play and away from the seemingly endless series of scandals and controversies that have marred the buildup to the first Olympics in South America.

“If this financial model of the Olympic Games withstands a stress test like in Brazil, then you can see that this model is more than robust,” IOC president Thomas Bach said. “The crisis the country is in is maybe the worst crisis in the history of Brazil.

“These were not always easy times, not even now. Therefore I think we can say very clearly the financial model of the games has really stood a stress test which I hope we will not have to withstand in the future again.”

Even so, Bach said, “We’re very confident they will be excellent games.”

Yet to think that the world watching Usain Bolt blaze across the five-ring stage a final time will be enough of a distraction for the IOC and Rio organizers to totally run away from troubles would be an act of self-denial of Olympian proportion.

The feud between the IOC and World Anti-Doping Agency over who’s to blame for the Olympic movement’s failure to get a handle on its drug problem still will be raging when the flame over the Maracana is extinguished Aug. 21.

“I think I can honestly say (that) in my career I don’t know if I’ve competed in a clean sport,” said U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history with 22 medals, 18 of them gold.

Bach and the IOC have been on the defensive since they declined last month to follow the lead of the Inteational Association of Athletics Federations, track and field’s global goveing body, which baed Russia from competing in Rio in the wake two WADA reports and numerous media exposes detailing a widespread, state-sponsored doping program. The IAAF extended its ban on Russians competing inteationally through the Olympics. The IOC, however, decided to leave it up to the individual inteational sports federations which Russian athletes get to compete in Rio.

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“Let us just for a moment consider the consequences of a ‘nuclear option,’” Bach said this week. “The result is death and devastation. This is not what the Olympic movement stands for.”

The IOC decision led to chaos and finger-pointing that promises to continue even after the cauldron is lit. While the criticism of Bach and the IOC has been widespread, some of the most pointed attacks have come from WADA. Bach and the IOC have pushed back just as hard.

“I think it’s not the reputation of the IOC that has to be restored, it’s the reputation of WADA,” said Alex Gilady, an IOC member from Israel.

“It is not the IOC that is responsible for the accreditation and supervision of anti-doping laboratories,” Bach said. “It is not the IOC which can be held responsible for all alleged corruption between the leadership of an inteational federation and a national member federation to cover up doing.

“The IOC has no authority to declare any organization noncompliant with the WADA code. The IOC has no authority over the testing program of athletes outside the Olympic Games. The IOC has no authority to follow up on information about the failings of the testing system.”

Few in Rio would argue with Bach’s last point.

“It’s very conceing to me that our goveing bodies have dropped the ball in many ways on this,” said Bob Bowman, Phelps’ longtime coach and head coach of the U.S. men’s team in Rio. “The system is broken, and it has to be fixed.”

Said Phelps: “For me, and I think I can speak for other athletes as well, we all want clean sports. That’s all we want. We want everybody to be on the same playing field.”

No one has been on Bolt’s level the past two Olympics. Having vanquished Justin Gatlin twice at last year’s world championships, the Jamaican is favored to pull off a third sweep of the Olympic 100, 200 and 4x100-meter relay gold medals in what he insists will be his final games.

It looked like Japanese gymnast Kohei Uchimura might have to keep competing after Rio even if he successfully defends his Olympic all-around title. Uchimura, who in addition to his London victory has won the last six World all-around crowns, ran up a $4,954 phone bill playing Pokémon Go since landing in Rio. Fortunately for Uchimura, his cellphone carrier agreed to give him a backdated plan that costs only $30 per day.

U.S. decathlete Ashton Eaton also is known for putting up big numbers. Eaton scored a world record 9,045 points in wiing last year’s World title. The score was 200 points more than any mark by another decathlete in the past 10 years.

On the road, Great Britain’s Chris Froome is attempting to duplicate countryman Sir Bradley Wiggins’ 2012 Tour de France and Olympic time trial double.

But 2016 promises to be the Year of the Woman 2.0, and we’re not talking politics. Led by a roster of red, white and blue Olympic cover girls, Rio’s women’s competitions have all the makings of being at least the equal to the groundbreaking Atlanta Olympics.

U.S. women’s soccer team is looking for a fifth gold medal. The sport has been contested in only six games. In rowing, the U.S. women’s eight is undefeated at the Olympics and world championships since 2006.

The U.S. women’s gymnastics team might be even better than the Fierce Five, the record-shattering Olympic team champion in London. Texan Simone Biles, 19, is favored to win five golds in Rio and has already been called by no less than Mary Lou Retton as the “most talented gymnast I’ve ever seen.”

Serena Williams might be the greatest women’s teis player anyone has ever seen. Williams is favored to win the women’s single title and a fourth Olympic doubles title with sister Venus.

Shooter Kim Rhode, 37, has her aim at medaling in a sixth Olympics. Rio will be swimmer Katie Ledecky’s second games, but she is favored to sweep the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles and could pick up two more medals in relays.

Then there’s boxer Claressa Shields, the pride of Flint, Mich. Shields grew up battling poverty pretty much on her own. Her father spent seven of her first nine years in prison. Her mother, a drug addict, wasn’t around much either. Now 21, Shields insists on being there for her family. Since wiing gold in London, Shields has adopted her cousin’s daughter. The cousin, already the mother of two, didn’t want a third child and asked Shields for money for an abortion after becoming pregnant. Instead Shields talked the woman into having the child and letting her adopt the girl.

Not all of Rio’s Golden Girls, however, will be an American.

Japanese wrestler Saori Yoshida hasn’t lost in three Olympics and 13 Worlds. Don’t look for anyone to beat her in Rio either. South Africa’s Caster Semenya is just as big of favorite in the 800 meter and is a threat to break the world record of 1:53.28 set by Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983. One of the most intriguing showdowns will be in the heptathlon where defending champion Jessica Eis-Hill faces a challenge from Canada’s Briae Theisen-Eaton, Ashton’s wife, who is looking complete a his and her’s multi-event gold medal set.

Australia’s swimming Campbell sisters, Cate and Bronte could go 1-2 in both the 50 and 100 freestyles. Competing against the Campbells in the 100 freestyle will be Yusra Mardini, a Syrian who will swim as part of the Refugee Olympic team in Rio.

“I want to show the world refugee is not a bad word,” she said. After her family’s home in Damascus was destroyed by the fighting in Syria, Mardini and an older sister, Sarah, fled, bouncing through a series of refugee camps in Lebanon before 11 months ago climbing aboard with 18 other refugees a small, frail boat in Turkey headed for Greece.

In the middle of the night the boat’s engine failed and the vessel began taking on water. Fearing the group would drown, Mardini and her sister and two others dove into the frigid Aegean Sea and began pulling the sinking boat toward the Greek Island of Lesbos and safety.

“We were the only four who knew how to swim,” Mardini said. “I had one hand with the rope attached to the boat as I moved my two legs and one arm. It was three and a half hours in the cold water. Your body is almost like done.”

The group reached shore and the Mardini sisters now live in Berlin.

This week Mardini was asked if she considered the experience a nightmare.

“Not at all,” she said. “I remember that without swimming I would never be alive. Maybe that is the story of this boat. It’s a positive memory for me.”

And perhaps maybe something of a message of hope for the IOC and Rio organizers, who after seven years of storms are looking for the next 17 days to provide safe haven.