Judoka Rafaela Silva, who won Brazil’s first medal – gold - on Aug. 8, had received racial slurs like “monkey that should be in a cage” when she was disqualified from the London 2012 Games; now she is fa heroine. Credit: Roberto Castro/Brasil2016

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 18 2016 (IPS)

Brazil’s first gold medal of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics gave it a new multipurpose heroine, Rafaela Silva, whose defeat of the favourites in judo has made her a strong voice against racism and homophobia. Not only is she black and poor, but she just came out as gay.

In her first remarks as an Olympic champion, on Aug. 8, she referred to the harsh criticism she received after being disqualified in the second round of the London Olympics in 2012, when people lashed out against her in the social media, with one saying she was a “monkey who should be in a cage.” Her medal is her vengeance against racism.

It is also an example of a triumph over the poverty and crime that drags down so many young people in the Cidade de Deus, the Rio de Janeiro “favela” or shantytown where she grew up, which was made famous by the film City of God.

Colourful figures like Silva or Jamaican runner Usain Bolt, or unbeatable athletes like U.S. swimming legend Michael Phelps,are crucial in the Olympics, which have become a huge global media event, more than the leading international sports competition.

Sheer overkill also plays a key role in the media spectacle. In the Aug. 5-21 Rio Games, 11,552 athletes – eight percent more than in London 2012 – are participating in 306 medal events in 42 disciplines.

But the number of journalists grew even more, by about 20 percent. More than 25,000 accredited reporters are covering Rio 2016, which translates into 2.2 press, TV, radio and internet journalists for each athlete during the 19-day Games.

The Rio Games – the first held in South America – are the most connected Olympics in history, with data traffic and internet activity four times greater than in London.

And while six million tickets were sold for the stadiums, according to the organisers, billions in profits have been made from the spectators watching the Games on TV or over the internet worldwide.

The opening ceremony alone was watched by an estimated three billion people around the globe. The colourful ceremony and its special effects, directed by prize-winning filmmakers, cleared up the doubts about the success of the Games, due to threats like construction delays, the Zika virus epidemic and Brazil’s political and economic crisis.

The filtered view provided by dozens of TV cameras is no substitute for the actual atmosphere of the stadiums, but it makes it possible to see up-close details from different angles, including up above, which is impossible for spectators in the stadiums. And the technological advances constantly improve the experience of watching the Games from far away points on the globe.

Aesthetics is another dimension that colors the competition. It played a role in the inauguration of the Games and its strong presence in some disciplines, like the various gymnastics or diving events, helped minimise the military origins of many Olympic sports, like wrestling or shooting.

Judoka Rafaela Silva, who won Brazil’s first medal – gold – on Aug. 8, had received racial slurs like “monkey that should be in a cage” when she was disqualified from the London 2012 Games; now she is fa heroine. Credit: Roberto Castro/Brasil2016

But the drama seen in many of the contests is perhaps the central element of the Olympic media spectacle.

More people remember Swiss long-distance runner Gabriela Andersen’s struggle to finish the 1984 Olympic marathon in 37th place, staggering with heat exhaustion in the final 200 metres, than the actual winner of the marathon in Los Angeles that year.

For the honour of lighting the Olympic cauldron at the inauguration of the Rio 2016 Games, the athlete chosen was Brazilian runner Vanderlei de Lima, who became famous in Athens in 2004 when an Irish priest shoved him to the side of the road when he was in the lead in the marathon.

A Greek spectator helped free Lima from the grasp of the priest – who was later defrocked – and he continued the race. But he lost time and his rhythm was broken, and he ended in third place. For exemplifying the spirit of sportsmanship he showed by settling for the bronze, the International Olympic Committee awarded him the Pierre de Coubertin medal, a special decoration that carries the name of the founder of the IOC.

The footage of the incident, broadcast over and over around the world, made Lima an Olympics symbol.

The show needs heroes. National ones abound; sometimes winning a medal is all it takes. So far in Rio 2016, there are many examples.

Judoka Majlinda Kelmendi will surely provide a major boost to the eight-year-old Kosovo’s consolidation as an independent nation now that she has won the country’s first medal – gold. In 2012 she competed under the Albanian flag.

Fiji as well won its first medal – also gold – in Rugby Sevens, which debuted in these Games as an Olympic sport. (Rugby union was played at the Olympics from 1900 to 1924.)

Puerto Rico, an associated free state of the United States, with its own delegation in the Olympics, also took its first gold medal in Rio, won by Monica Puig in tennis.

The IOC recognizes 208 national committees, surpassing the 193 members of the United Nations. Some participants in the Olympics are not independent states, as in the case of Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, the Virgin Islands or American Samoa.

Dramatic incidents like the one involving Vanderlei de Lima also give rise to Olympic heroes, who add to the show.

Etenesh Diro of Ethiopia was cheered when she completed the 3,000-metre steeplechase, even though she finished seventh. She had pulled off her shoe when it was torn in a tangle with other competitors and continued on, barefoot.

But although she didn’t qualify for the final, the authorities rewarded spots in the race to her and two others who fell.

Heroes are generally individuals. Maybe that’s why football didn’t overshadow the Games – a worry that was apparently behind some restrictions set on participating in the sport, which is wildly popular in Brazil, such as a 23-year age limit, with three exceptions.

At any rate, the Olympic audience is guaranteed thanks to the diversity of sports, cultures and dramatic personal or national situations.

The excess of raw material for journalists and for the television and online show and the out of proportion size will make it difficult for another country of the developing South to host the Games in the near future.

Besides aspects linked to the needs and pressures of what is, more than anything, a huge global spectacle, the decision will also be influenced by the problems that cropped up in Rio, like construction delays, urban crime, water pollution, half-empty stadiums, and unsportsmanlike loud booing of some foreign athletes and teams.

Kaillana de Oliveira Donato, 14, plays basketball in the Olympic Villa in Mangueira, a poor neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro, and participates in U.N. Women’s “One Win Leads to Another” programme. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 12 2016 (IPS)

At the age of 14, Kaillana de Oliveira of Brazil knows she won’t be as tall as most professional basketball players, because of family genetics. But she is not letting that get in the way of her dream of standing out in the sport.

“I’m point guard, and you don’t have to be so tall for that position,” Oliveira, a student at the Olympic Villa – a multi-purpose sports complex – in the poor Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood of Mangueira, told IPS.

That public sports facility produced three of the players on Brazil’s women’s national basketball team, which is competing in the Aug. 5-22 Rio 2016 Olympics.

Oliveira trains at least four days a week, “for three hours, sometimes more.” She gets up at 5 AM to attend a school in a distant neighbourhood, which offered her a scholarship as a promising young athlete. She is disciplined and is in bed by 9 PM.

Oliveira has participated in many tournaments for girls. “Basketball is a fast, dynamic contact sport,” she said. That’s why she chose it five years ago, from the various sports she tried in a complex near the Mangueira “favela” or shantytown, where she lives.

Her family supported her choice, but she faces prejudice among her classmates. “They say it’s for lesbians,” she said.

“I want to be a good player; if I don’t make it, I’ll be a lawyer,” Oliveira told IPS in a conversation on the basketball court where she trains.

She participates in the programme “One Win Leads to Another”, an initiative of U.N. Women and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) aimed at empowering girls through sports, as a legacy of the first Olympic Games to be held in South America.

The programme, based on the Dutch NGO Women Win, includes weekly workshops on issues like self-esteem, leadership, sexual rights, violence and financial planning, as well as sports activities.

It began in Rio de Janeiro and until 2017 will function as a pilot project, with the goal of boosting the autonomy and self-confidence of 2,500 girls between the ages of 10 and 18, as well as 300 adolescent mothers who have dropped out of school.

The activities are held in 16 multi-sports complexes called Olympic Villas that the city government has set up in poor neighbourhoods.

The programme will later be adapted to local conditions and expanded to other cities around Brazil and Latin America.

Kaillana de Oliveira Donato, Marcelly de Mendonça and Adrielle da Silva are active in the U.N. Women’s and International Olympic Committee’s “One Win Leads to Another” programme, standing next to Juliana Azevedo, a vice president in Procter & Gamble, another partner in the initiative, during the presentation of the programme in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Women Win, a U.N. Women partner, developed the original programme, which has already been implemented in 25 countries.

A survey found that of 217,000 participants, the proportion of girls who saw themselves as leaders increased from 46 to 89 percent, and the proportion of those who know how to avoid getting pregnant or catching a sexually transmitted disease rose threefold, to 79 and 77 percent, respectively.

The initiative also seeks to expand access among teenage girls to the benefits of sports. Around the world, 49 percent of girls quit practicing sports when they hit puberty – six times the proportion for boys, which aggravates gender inequality, according to U.N. Women.

“The power of sport should never be underestimated. It can change lives, through increasing girls’ and young women’s beliefs in their own abilities, encouraging them to take initiative and aim high,” U.N. Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said at the Aug. 6 presentation of “One Win Leads to Another” in Rio de Janeiro.

One of the big challenges the programme has taken on “is leveling the playing field for men and women,” the representative of U.N. Women in Brazil, Nadine Gasman, told IPS. “In the Rio Olympic games, women make up 46 percent of the competitors, and there are no sports that do not include women, but the difference in resources is appalling.”

“Ten national Olympic committees include no women, and very few are on the International Olympic Committee,” which means they have less of an influence on sports, she said. “Women are also less visible on TV sports channels, where the broadcasting of men’s sports wins 10 to one, with the exception of the Olympics.”

The history of the Olympic Games reflects women’s struggle for inclusion. Women were absent from the first modern-era edition, in 1896 in Athens. In the next Games, in Paris in 1900, the only women’s sports were tennis and golf, and women made up just 2.2 percent of the total number of participants – 22 out of 997.

The proportion only climbed above 10 percent after 1952, growing to 44.2 percent in 2012, after women’s boxing was finally accepted as an Olympic sport.

But inequality persists. The funds earmarked by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) for the national teams that participated in the men’s 2014 World Cup, also hosted by Brazil, were 40 times greater than the amount that went to the 2015 Women’s World Cup, Gasman pointed out.

Teenage basketball players training in an Olympic Villa, one of the sports complexes created by the Rio de Janeiro city government, in the “favela” or shantytown of Mangueira, close to the installations where the Olympic Games are being held. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The women’s winning team’s prize was smaller than the amount that went to the team that came in last in the FIFA World Cup, reflecting the discrimination still suffered by women athletes, she added.

But in the Olympics, the imbalance is being reduced more quickly. In 1995 the Women in Sport Commission was created in the IOC, to advise the executive board and president on how to expand women’s participation in decision-making and how to develop and implement the IOC women and sports policy.

Since 2004, women have served as vice president of the IOC, and since March this year, at least one-third of the members of the IOC working groups are women.

But cultural and social prejudice continues to hinder progress towards gender equality in the practice and administration of sports.

Adolescence is a critical period of physical changes and peer pressure. That is why it is essential to intervene at that time, as “One Win Leads to Another” does, “to keep girls in sports, which helps them prepare for life at the same time,” said Gasman.

In Brazil, the rate at which girls drop out of sports at puberty is lower than the international average reported by U.N. Women and the IOC, but it is still worrisome.

A survey carried out by the Ministry of Sports in 2013 found that 34.8 percent of girls quit sports before the age of 15, compared to 19.3 percent of boys.

But this is not true in Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Villa sports complexes. “We have more girls than boys, and they stay throughout adolescence. But they prefer ballet, jazz or rhythmic gymnastics,” said Norma Marinho, a social assistant at the Miécimo da Silva Sports Centre in Campo Grande, a huge working class neighborhood west of Rio de Janeiro.

The idea that certain sports are for boys keeps girls away from track and field and many other disciplines. “They crowd into ballet classes, even if the teacher is a man,” said Marilda Veloso, who teaches handball at the sports complex, where 13,000 students and other people are active in 28 different sports.

Factors that lead girls to drop out are “embarrassment about their bodies, household chores, and prejudices,” although fewer are quitting these days, Veloso, who has worked at the sports centre for 30 years, told IPS.

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2015 (IPS)

The Women’s World Cup has shown people everywhere what women athletes are all about: skill, strength, unity and determination. I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the winners – the team from the United States – and to all others who participated. You are inspiring millions of women and girls around the world to pursue their goals and dreams.

Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Photo: Marco Grob

Women are far more visible in sports today than at any previous point in history. The Women’s World Cup, as just one example, reached tens of millions of viewers, breaking television ratings records. The teams in that event were doing more than adroitly blocking a pass or scoring a goal.

They were challenging stereotypes and demonstrating women’s leadership and other abilities that can readily translate into many other domains. Perseverance and team spirit, among other values, can take women far in business, politics, scientific research, the arts and any other field.

As inspiring as the Women’s World Cup is, however, it also reminds us that gender inequalities still plague professional sports. For example, the women were required to play on artificial turf, which is often regarded as more physically punishing than natural grass – the surface favoured by athletes and provided when male teams play.

And there is the name itself—the World Cup is assumed to be for men, while women require the qualifying “Women’s” to describe their event.The total payout for the Women’s World Cup was 15 million dollars, compared with 576 million dollars for the last men’s World Cup—40 times less.

Women players also face a huge pay gap. The total payout for the Women’s World Cup was 15 million dollars, compared with 576 million dollars for the last men’s World Cup—40 times less.

The winning women’s team received two million dollars in prize money, whereas the winning men’s team took away 35 million dollars. The losing U.S. men’s team was still awarded 8 million dollars—four times as much as the champion U.S. women’s team.

Similar pay gaps occur across other professional sports – with the exception of tennis, which since 2007 has awarded equal prize money at all four Grand Slam tournaments. That should be the model to which all other sports aspire. All sports federations should close the gap and put women and men, in this and all other respects, on an equal playing field.

Deeply entrenched, discriminatory notions of women’s diminished status, whether the issue is a playing field or a paycheck, harm individual women and girls. They are denied their rights and blocked from achieving their full potential. Such norms also undermine sport itself, tarnishing notions such as fair play and open competition.

It is time to overturn the barriers and stereotypes, because every step to do so is a step towards gender equality and women’s empowerment. Many women athletes, especially in sports not traditionally considered “feminine”, lead the way, with grit and grace.

Sports programmes have been successful in reducing restrictions on mobility and social isolation that many women and girls experience, particularly those who live in poverty, and who might otherwise be mainly confined within their communities and families.

Through sport, women and girls can find safe places to gather, build new interpersonal networks, develop a sense of identity and pursue new opportunities, often in the process becoming more engaged in community life.

Governments, the United Nations, civil society, the sport movement and others have recognized the contribution of sports to the social, economic and political empowerment of women and girls. Now is the time to act on this recognition.

Women and girls should be encouraged to explore sports, and anyone who would like to participate should be able to do so. In some cases, this may require increased investments; in others, a rebalancing of resources to ensure equal opportunities for men and women, girls and boys.

Sport and the pursuit of gender equality can be mutually reinforcing — through the creation of role models, the promotion of values and powerful outreach. Both can generate a dream and drive people to strive for change, unleashing tremendous benefits for individuals and for our societies at large.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Girls from the La Nuestra football team wait to start their twice-weekly training in the Villa 31 shantytown in Buenos Aires. They often have to cut short their practice when boys take over the local pitch. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 6 2015 (IPS)

During a women’s football match in a poor neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, team manager Mónica Santino has to stop the game and ask a group of boys and young men not to invade the pitch where they’re playing. This frequent occurrence is just one symbol of a struggle being played out, centimeter by centimeter, on Argentina’s pitches.

“Come on, stop just for a while, we’re leaving soon. Don’t get in the middle of our game,” Santino said, trying to persuade in a friendly way the boys and teenagers who bully their way onto the pitch where the women’s match is going on, in Villa 31, a shantytown of 40,000 people on the northeast side of Buenos Aires, right in the middle of the upscale Retiro neighourhood.

“If it was a men’s match they would never do that, because they would have serious problems. But since it’s girls who are playing…” she commented to IPS one night the La Nuestra team was playing.

Although girls and women make up half of the population of this ‘villa miseria’, as shantytowns are called in Argentina, it hasn’t been easy for them to gain a place on the football pitch, traditionally men’s territory.“Playing football here, the girls have two hours when they don’t have to think about anything else, when they just have fun, and forge ties with other young women. Many things that happen for us are political, they have a revolutionary component, because something is changing.” – Mónica Santino

“They think football and the pitch are for them,” one of the players, 15-year-old Agustina Olaña, told IPS.

When the project began in 2007, they had to mark off the area they were using with cones and stones. Now they practice twice a week.

“It doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but this achievement sends out an extremely important message about gender because football pitches are the most important public spaces in the barrios,” said Santino, a 49-year-old former football player who was the first woman coach in the Argentine Football Association.

“We live in a country where football is the national sport – it explains us as Argentines, it represents us in world championships, but in football women are still second-class citizens,” she lamented.

La Nuestra (Ours) is also an organisation that seeks greater access to football for women, using the sport to empower them, build self esteem and boost gender equality.

The project initially only targeted teenagers. But it was soon overwhelmed by the spontaneous demand from girls and adult women. Of today’s 70 participants, half are between the ages of six and 12, and the rest are over 13.

“For presents, I would get dolls or little balls, but I wanted footballs,” said one of the students, nine-year-old Florencia Carabajal.

“It seems to me that men haven’t learned that we can also play,” said 10-year-old Juanita Burgos, who hopes to become a professional footballer. “The boys used to call me a tomboy. But now they don’t say anything to me anymore. I tell them that if I want to play ball, who are they to say I can’t.”

But her dream is not an easy one for women to reach in Argentina, even though this country won the World Cup twice and has produced legendary players like Diego Maradona and Leonel Messi.

In women’s football, Argentina has never won a global championship. According to Santino, that’s because the big clubs believe “it isn’t a good show, and doesn’t generate money,” which is why Argentina doesn’t invest in women players as other countries do.

“No club has the structure for lower divisions or for girls to start training as players at an early age, which is when you grow as an athlete and get ready to compete,” she said.

“When Argentina has participated in international tournaments, it has been painful, because when we play against teams like those of Germany or the United States, they score 11, 13, 15 goals,” she said.

“Then the brutal criticism starts: that the Argentine jersey can’t be sullied, or that the country can’t be publicly embarrassed that way. But you can see here that we don’t have the infrastructure. Their arguments are really unfair,” said Santino.

“I was fortunate to be on the team, to have played in a world cup, but we really did it on our own, at great sacrifice,” said the La Nuestra coach, 33-year-old Vanina García, who had no choice but to keep working while playing football.

Santino is pushing for the project to be replicated in other barrios, and to that end she draws on her experience as a scout for street soccer for the homeless. She also hopes to create a women’s football club, where the women will not only play but will discuss issues such as sports and gender as well.

La Nuestra emerged from Santino’s work as coordinator of the Women’s Football Programme of the Women’s Centre in the Buenos Aires district of Vicente López. It receives funds from the Buenos Aires city government’s programme for adolescents, and the national government’s children’s affairs secretariat.

“We have managed to do it with the sweat of our brow,” she said.

According to Santino, an activist for women’s rights in sports and a member of the non-governmental Women in Equality Foundation, “this is a pending issue on the feminist agenda.”

“Women are not expected to run, sweat, make an effort,” she said. “They say that if you play football, your body will turn into a man’s body. There’s a widespread idea that all women who play football are lesbians.”

“I believe this involves the same thing as when we’re talking about the right to have an abortion and all the different kinds of prejudice that emerge. It’s a way of controlling women’s bodies, saying what they should look like,” she said.

For Santino, women’s football provides a good excuse to talk about other feminist demands, such as the right to rest and recreation.

“To come to a game, the big burden was the housework,” she said. “They would come after washing the dishes, or taking care of their younger siblings or their own children, starting at a really young age. Things that women are supposed to do. Boys, on the other hand, get home from school, dump their backpacks, and come to the football pitch directly.”

“Playing football here, the girls and women have two hours when they don’t have to think about anything else, when they just have fun, and forge ties with others. For us, a lot of what is happening is political, it has a revolutionary component, because something is changing,” Santino said.

For Karen Marín, 19, who sells chicken and came to this country from Bolivia with her parents when she was eight years old, La Nuestra has offered a way to make friends and become part of Argentine society.

“I suffered from discrimination because I’m Bolivian, and I would draw into myself and just stay in my room,” she said. “One day they invited me here. I’ve never missed a day since. Football helped me with everything, and it especially helped me to be more easy-going and open.”

Despite the difficulties, coach García believes women’s football, which is now practiced in schools and in most neighbourhood tournaments, is more widely accepted.

“I suppose that’s because women have taken on another role,” she said. “In a lot of areas, but in football as well. Women stand up for themselves, and if they want to play football, they play.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The fans of the Brazilian team Fluminense during an exhibition game with the Italian team on the eve of the FIFA World Cup. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO , Jun 14 2014 (IPS)

The seven-year-old got bored after running here and there for five minutes, amidst a group of a dozen classmates. He eventually stomped off the field because he hadn’t managed to kick the ball even once.

“Football is like that, you have to be patient,” he was told by the phys ed teacher who was introducing the group of young students to the sport. Although it might not seem like the most necessary character trait for practicing sports.

So how to explain the passion ignited by football in the most varied regions and cultures of the world? Why does the FIFA World Cup, which opened Thursday in Brazil, awaken so much enthusiasm on all of the world’s continents?

Romario de Souza Faria, one of the greatest Brazilian footballers, whose five goals in the 1994 World Cup in the United States ensured Brazil’s victory, actually spent very little time with the ball in any particular 90-minute game. He became a national hero with his lightning fast strikes.

In 2007, when he tried to convert the thousandth goal of his career, a reporter noted that Romario held the ball for only 16 seconds in the entire game. At one point he went 30 minutes without touching it.

The few goals in any given football match – there are even games that end 0-0 – are tedious for many who prefer the faster pace of basketball or volleyball, where games end with dozens, and generally more than 100, points.

Other people think some of football’s rules are irrational, such as offside, which interrupts the play at a peak moment, when the forward is in an ideal position to score – and drive the fans wild.

There are others who complain that football is too violent. Broken bones and other injuries are all too common as players kick and elbow and crash into each other – sometimes without even being penalised. The opposite of volleyball, where excessive physical contact is avoided.

But despite everything, football has won over huge majorities of the population in much of the world, and is still growing in popularity, overcoming traditional preferences and resistance, like in the United States and Japan.

Still, it can’t be described as a completely universal sport, because it has yet to win significant support in some large countries like China and India.

The secret of football’s overwhelming popularity and consequent success on the business front does not appear to lie in the fields, the players or the ball, but in the minds of the spectators. It is as a show, more than as a sport to be practiced, that it became the champion.

Many sports, especially team sports, have managed to draw enormous audiences in person and on TV. For example, there is baseball in the United States and Japan, basketball in many countries, or cricket in India, Australia and other former British colonies.

But football has singular aspects that make it the most popular sport, capable of attracting an estimated 3.6 million stadium-goers during the 20th World Cup, which is being hosted by 12 Brazilian cities from Jun. 12 through Jul. 13.

Several children, one of them wearing the Brazilian team’s colours, in the street where football legend and now legislator Romario was born in Jacarezinho, a poor neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro. All three boys were sure Brazil would win the 2014 World Cup being hosted by their country. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

One fundamental element is that fans feel powerful, by supporting their team or analysing the players’ moves.

More than spectators, fans feel like participants and designers of alternatives in the games, because football is an open work of art, a stimulus for creativity. Their collective support tends to influence the results more than in any other sport.

The fans have a big picture of the game; they can see the entire field and follow all the moves, unlike the players, who are in the thick of things, surrounded – and harassed – by their rivals, and have a more narrow view of what is going on.

As the saying goes, every Brazilian is a coach. Fans reach their own conclusions about tactics, plays, the best use and combination of the players’ skills – infinite details that can be decisive.

The discussions and arguments are endless, as is news about the sport. Perhaps there is no journalism so exhaustive and widely read as football coverage.

Two decades ago, Brazilian João Havelange, former president of FIFA (1974-1998), said offside should not be eliminated since the “imperfection” of football is one of the reasons it is so popular, because it generates so much debate.

Football in its extreme complexity makes it possible for anyone to feel expert or knowledgeable enough to evaluate, analyse, have their own ideas about games, teams, referees, coaches and players.

The fact that it basically involves the feet, running counter to human evolution that concentrated people’s skills in their hands, adds uncertainties that bring it close to chaos theory. Secondary factors can be decisive, all of the actors count, and – another essential aspect – it is a team game.

The best teams tend to win more, but every king has his plebeian days; no one is invincible. Because of all this, the support of the fans has a much greater influence than in other sports – which is recognised in many tournaments, where a goal scored on the rival’s field is worth more than one in their own stadium.

The frequency with which fortuitous events end up determining an outcome encourages fans as well as the practice of football. The most mediocre players, no matter how few chances they get, can score a goal at some point or make a good play. Like in the lottery, that hope or faith moves athletes and fans.

The success of football as a spectacle grows with each World Cup and is reflected in the more than 18,000 journalists accredited for the current edition in Brazil as well as the thousands of non-accredited reporters.

The result is excessive commercialisation, according to many Brazilians who have complained about and protested the concessions that the Brazilian government made to FIFA as conditions for hosting the World Cup, including nearly 12 billion dollars in investment in stadiums, airports and urban infrastructure.

The hero of 1994, Romario, now a Socialist Party legislator, said in January that FIFA is “the real president of the country” until the Cup ends. Brazil has become the “slave” of an institution that is “100 percent corrupt,” he said on another occasion.

The suspicions grew in the last week, after the British press alleged that corrupt payments were made to Asian and African officials with influence in FIFA to secure the choice of Qatar as host of the 2022 tournament.

What sporting or market criteria would justify that choice? That question is hanging in the air as the world’s largest sporting event is in full stride.

Kids from a poor neighbourhood in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, kick around a football. They are excited ahead of the the FIFA World Cup, for which Cameroon has qualified a record seven times. Courtesy: Ngala Killian Chimtom

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jun 11 2014 (IPS)

It is almost 6pm. A group of kids are plying their craft in a dusty, dirty courtyard in a poor neighbourhood in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital. That craft is football.  They kick the once-white-but-now-brown, aged football around. One child is barefoot, the other wears worn shoes and is dressed in the kit of the national team. 

“I want to play like [Lionel] Messi,” one of kids called Jack tells IPS as his voice rises above the rest of the excited crowd. “I am Eto’o…I am Ronaldo…Pepe…Rooney…,” the kids start shouting, each one of them giving the name of his dream football star.

Samuel Eto’o is Cameroon’s football star, he plays forward for English club Chelsea, and will be leading the national team, known worldwide as the Indomitable Lions, in this year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil.Football is more than just a game here “it is a religion,” -- sports journalist Fon Echeckiye.

Cristiano Ronaldo, is the famous Portuguese footballer who plays as a forward for Spanish club Real Madrid, and Pepe is the nickname for his fellow club member, Képler Laveran Lima Ferreira. Wayne Rooney is an English football star who punters predict will take the upcoming football world cup by storm.

With just a day to go before the proposed start of the world cup from the Jun. 12 – Jul. 13, Brazilians have begun protests and strikes in demand of higher wages. There have been numerous reports of corruption and rights violations during the public works to prepare for the event.

But here in this Central African nation, the kids are oblivious to this and have big dreams and big ambitions. And this reflects the deeper passions that drive football in Cameroon — a country that will be participating in this year’s World Cup for a record seven times — more than any other African team.

Football is more than just a game here “it is a religion,” sports journalist Fon Echeckiye tells IPS.

A fan of the Indomitable Lions, Cameroon’s national team. This central African nation has qualified for the FIFA World Cup a record seven time. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

Cameroon for all its football glory has only two standard football stadiums, one in Yaounde and the other in Garoua in the country’s Far North Region. Despite the poor infrastructure here, the love for football runs really deep in Cameroon.

According to the African Economic Outlook, although Cameroon has abundant natural resources “revenues obtained from the exploitation of these resources, and from oil in particular, have not been sufficiently channelled into structural investments in infrastructure and the productive sectors.”

“In our day, each time we were faced with an opponent, we thought about nothing else than the national flag,” Thomas Nkono, the retired ace Cameroon keeper who was once nick-named “the Black Spider,” because of his acrobatic saves, tells IPS.

Of Cameroon’s estimated 20 million people, some 39.9 percent are affected by poverty.

“It was always a good feeling to know that millions of Cameroonians — poor and wretched alike — could abandon their daily bread and butter concerns to support the team. It always gave us an added motivation,” he muses.

That feeling amongst players hasn’t changed much. On the sidelines of the Lions’ last preparatory match for the 2014 FIFA World Cup against Moldova on Saturday, Jun. 7, striker, Achille Webo told IPS “it’s true some of us who play professional football earn a lot of money, but to see crowds like this is not something money can buy. It is highly motivating.”

Ngando Picket, a Lions’ supporter who accompanies the team everywhere, says over the years he’s composed more than three hundred songs in support of the team.

He speaks breathlessly as he strains to sing and dance. Ngando tells IPS: “The boys always need to know that the nation, the people stand behind them and I work daily to fulfil that role. I believe the singing and dancing we put on from the stands fires the boys up and that alone keeps them up to steam.

“We are travelling to Brazil to do so, and I believe Cameroon will create a lot of surprises.”

Across the board, supporters, initially sceptical about the team’s form ahead of the tournament, now seem to have gained in hope, after the tie with Germany in a warm up game.

“That match reminds me of 1990 when the Lions stunned the world with a 1-0 win over Argentina [then holders of the World Cup title] in the opening match of that year’s world cup,” says Benjamin Ngah, a taxi driver in Yaounde. The team eventually became the first African nation to qualify for the quarter final of a world cup tournament.

“I believe we have got the quality to accomplish the same exploit this year, or perhaps go further,” he tells IPS.

A football game in Jacarezinho, one of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. For children from these poor neighbourhoods, the pomp surrounding the World Cup is a distant echo. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 6 2014 (IPS)

It seemed like “a good deal” at the time, but then things changed. That description of the 2006 purchase of a U.S. refinery, one of the oil industry scandals hanging over the Brazilian government’s head, could also apply to attitudes towards the FIFA World Cup.

In 2007, the fact that Brazil was chosen to host the 2014 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) global championship triggered a sense of national euphoria. The mega sporting event would crown the economic ascent of this emerging power, which has won the most World Cups – five out of 18.

But now, instead of planning welcome parties for the Jun. 12-Jul. 13 tournament, Brazilians are taking to the streets in protests that are blocking traffic and bringing cities to a halt, holding strikes to demand wage hikes, and complaining about corruption and rights violations during the public works to prepare for the global event.

The country of football and joy is turning its back on its stereotype.

In Rio de Janeiro, the few streets decorated in green and yellow – the colours of the national team – contrast with the celebrations and sense of anticipation ahead of previous World Cups. The enthusiasm has been dampened just when Brazil is hosting the world’s biggest single-sport event.

The indignation of Brazilians erupted in June 2013, with surprising and often violent protests against the poor performance of the health and education systems, chaotic traffic, corruption, and the enormous amounts being spent on preparations for the World Cup.

Worried about further unrest, the government has ordered the deployment of 157,000 police and military troops to guarantee security during the games that will be held in 12 cities in this enormous country of nearly 200 million people.

But the declining excitement over football “is a tendency that has been seen in the last three World Cups,” said Paulo Santos, who has worked as a barber for 40 years in a lower middle-class Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood and hears the views of hundreds of clients, in a kind of ongoing informal opinion poll.

Hosting the World Cup should have revived the passion of fans.

But “they’re holding the party with other people’s money – ours,” complained Santos, reflecting the widespread sensation that the whole exercise has been marked by corruption, the squandering of public funds and FIFA’s greed.

Surveys reflect this view. In February, only 52 percent of those interviewed by the Datafolha polling institute were in favour of organising the World Cup, down from 79 percent in 2008.

The most recent poll, limited to the southern city of São Paulo, found that 45 percent of respondents were in favour and 43 percent were against, while the rest said they didn’t care. But worse than that was the fact that an overwhelming majority, 76 percent, said they thought the country wasn’t prepared to host the marathon of 64 games among 32 national teams.

Many of the projects planned, especially the urban transport works, were not carried out or were left incomplete. Some of the 12 stadiums were not finished until the last minute, without the finishing touches and without being tested. Half of them lack wireless Internet connection.

Delays in infrastructure works are a tradition in Brazil. The same thing happened in the first World Cup, held in Brazil in 1950. The main stadium, Maracaná in Rio de Janeiro, was inaugurated only a few days before the event, in the midst of a muddy construction site littered with left-over materials.

It was the world’s largest stadium. Designed for 155,250 spectators, it held a crowd of over 200,000 in the final match. Now, remodelled and sumptuous, it holds just under 74,700 people.

But the current megalomania is different. Since the last decade, Brazil has been caught up in a frenzy of building hydropower dams, railways, ports, highways and freeways, in an attempt to overcome the infrastructure deficit accumulated over the preceding two decades.

Most of the major projects are years behind. The main railway, a 4,155-km north-south route, has been under construction for 27 years, with only one-third of the rails installed.

Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana stadium, remodelled for the World Cup. Excessive spending on the installations is one of the complaints being voiced by protesters in Brazil. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

But no delays are possible in the case of the preparations for the World Cup in 12 cities and for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The looming deadlines may have been a factor in some of the accidents that have caused the deaths of nine workers in the World Cup stadiums, seven of them employed by subcontractors.

The rise in the number of workers concentrated in large construction sites all around the country has empowered construction workers. After a number of strikes, they secured wage hikes and benefits such as more frequent visits home for those who are working in distant regions.

But working conditions are still unsafe and accidents have been frequent, almost always due to lack of protection measures such as safe scaffolding, said Vitor Filgueiras, an economist investigating the phenomenon in his postdoctoral research.

Outsourcing is “a way of transferring risks,” and it makes working conditions even more unsafe and can even give rise to slave-like labour, he argued.

The World Cup has been a common focus for the recent protests and strikes by students, teachers, bus drivers and other groups. But popular support for the street demonstrations and battles has dropped sharply, according to opinion polls – luckily for the government of Dilma Rousseff.

A year ago, 54 percent of those surveyed by the Vox Populi Institute supported the protests, compared to just 18 percent today.

That reduces the risk of massive demonstrations during the World Cup itself. But groups made up of a few dozen activists are now paralysing cities, in a kind of guerrilla warfare benefited by the constant traffic jams.

The October presidential and legislative elections are also politicising football. The World Cup and the government are linked in the public’s mind. A failure for Brazil, in the stadiums or in the organisation of the event, would drive up the number of votes for the opposition.

The president is still the clear front-runner, but football has taken on growing influence in the elections, added to other government initiatives that also sounded like a good idea at the time – but don’t any longer.

For example, the purchase of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas by Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras was supposed to boost the firm’s international expansion and enable it to refine heavy crude in the U.S. market.

But it cost three times the initial contract for 360 million dollars, and became less important because Brazil increased its production of light crude oil. The case is under investigation by oversight bodies and amplified other scandals involving Petrobras.

Measures to reduce the cost of electricity in 2012 and benefit both industry and households also turned out to be a disaster. They encouraged consumption at a time when a lengthy drought reduced hydropower generation, unleashing an energy crisis, with the threat of power outages.

The discontent, also fuelled by a high inflation rate and a sluggish economy, infected the World Cup, which was already affected by specific factors of its own. FIFA’s demands for extraordinary terms and conditions created “a state of emergency,” wrote labour judge Lygia Cavalcanti in the magazine published by the Judges for Democracy Association.

Brazil agreed to “a temporary suspension” of certain laws guaranteeing citizens’ freedom of movement and workers’ right to strike in order to hold the World Cup, she said.

In addition, FIFA was given exclusive rights to advertise, sell and distribute products within a two-kilometre radius around the stadiums, local residents were evicted and relocated, and 18,000 volunteers have been organised to work during the World Cup, even though under Brazilian law volunteer work can only be used by non-profit cultural, civic or welfare institutions.

In addition, FIFA was given the right to file and fast-track registration of any trademark it wanted relating to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil’s patent office, including around 200 commonly used words, expressions and symbols such as names using “2014”, like “Brazil 2014” or “Natal 2014”, which can only be used commercially this year if fees are paid to FIFA.

FIFA even charged the Alzirão Recreational and Cultural Association 28,000 reals (12,500 dollars) to organise the popular street party it has held since 1978 in Rio de Janeiro, where the Brazil matches are shown on a giant screen

Alzirão was going to have to pay broadcasting rights, because more than 30,000 people a day watch the games on the big screen.

But Mayor Eduardo Paes managed to convince FIFA to exempt the non-profit event, said Ricardo Ferreira, president of the cultural association.

Ferreira told IPS that the excitement for the World Cup “was lukewarm but is growing.” A triumph by Brazil in the opening game in the São Paulo’s Corinthians stadium could cheer people up and bring back the passion, he added.

Stands in the Arena Dunas in the city of Natal in Northeast Brazil, one of the eight FIFA World Cup stadiums granted a sustainable construction certificate. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
NATAL, Brazil, May 15 2014 (IPS)

Brazil’s efforts to promote the image of an environmentally sustainable World Cup have focused on the stadiums built for the tournament. But the 12 cities where the matches will be played are in a race against time to complete the urban transport projects.

Natal, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Norte in the Brazilian Northeast, is one of the cities that will host the World Cup 2014, and four games will be played here. This city of 800,000 people is known in this country as the “city of the sun” because there are more than 300 days of sunshine a year, enjoyed by visitors to the state’s 400 km of beaches.

This is the city with the cleanest air in South America, according to a study carried out in 1994 by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in partnership with the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Water quality here is also excellent, because the water is “filtered” by the vast dunes surrounding the city.

Natal, which receives 1.5 million tourists a year, is now seeking an image of a sustainable city during the World Cup, which will take place in Brazil Jun. 12-Jul. 13.

The Arena Dunas stadium in Natal was officially inaugurated on Jan. 22, with a capacity for 42,000 spectators. The cost went 30 percent over the 190 million dollar budget, but at least the project is considered environmentally sustainable.

The OAS construction company, which built and is managing the stadium, will harvest rainwater, which will cut water consumption by 40 percent. And nearly 100 percent of the waste generated will be recycled.

In contrast with how early the stadium was finished, the urban transport works in the city run the risk of not being completed by the World Cup kickoff match on Jun. 13 – which could hurt the image of Natal as a sustainable World Cup city.

Unfinished transportation works around the stadium in Natal where the first of the four FIFA World Cup matches to be hosted by this city will take place on Jun. 13. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Of the seven transport projects planned, only one was completed, a year ago. At that time the remaining six were still only on paper, and three ended up being cancelled, after the city government admitted that it was unable to implement them.

The mayor of Natal, Carlos Eduardo Alves of the opposition Democratic Labour Party (PDT), told IPS that the city would be ready to host the World Cup thanks to 250 million dollars in federal funds.

“When Natal was chosen to be one of the host cities, it had 53 months to build the infrastructure and complete the projects. When I took office in January 2013, there were only 18 months to go, and nothing had started yet,” he said.

A total of 1,450 people are employed in shifts, 24/7, on the infrastructure projects.

Alves guaranteed that six tunnels and a viaduct would be finished by May 31. A second viaduct won’t be done on time, but it will nevertheless be open to traffic during the World Cup.

“Natal won’t end after the World Cup,” the mayor said. “It will leave us with the biggest drainage system in the city, which cost 60 million dollars, and which will be 70 percent complete by the start of the World Cup.”

He added that 4,000 trees would be planted around the city.

He also said the big problem facing Brazilian cities today is traffic congestion, which is why tunnels and viaducts are being built, to ease traffic jams.

But the coordinator of transport research in the Civil Energy Department of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Enilson Medeiros dos Santos, doubts that the six transport construction projects around the stadium will be finished in time for the tournament.

“I don’t think they’ll be completed,” Santos said. “The viaduct of the BR-101 freeway [next to the stadium] was not in the original project and doesn’t stand a chance of being finished – work got started on it really late.”

Santos, a prominent voice in urban planning in Natal, complained that his team was not consulted when the transport plans were drawn up.

“The city that it took the longest for the federal government’s funds to reach was Natal,” he said. “The moment for planning is past; now concrete spending plans are needed.”

Santos also complained about a lack of information. Of the cities that will host the World Cup games, Natal was ranked the lowest on transparency in investment in 2013 by the Ethos Institute.

“No one has access to the executive projects, it’s all a total mystery,” he said.

According to Santos, Natal was the fruit of an accelerated development process and is one of the cities in the Northeast with the highest number of motor vehicles per capita.

The city has one motor vehicle for every four inhabitants, while demand for public transport is falling. There are more than 260,000 vehicles in the city, and since 2000 the number of cars has risen at a rate of 20,000 a year.

“The city does not have chronic congestion, but traffic has gotten worse quickly in the last 10 years. We had already pointed out the problem in 1998, if the city failed to put in place high-quality public transport systems,” Santos said.

In June 2012, during the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), FIFA, the international governing body of association football, announced that it would invest 20 million dollars to make the 2014 World Cup the first with a comprehensive sustainability strategy.

The strategy included “green” stadiums, waste management, community support, reducing and offsetting carbon emissions, renewable energy, climate change and capacity development, according to FIFA and the Local Organising Committee.

FIFA also stated that it would give priority to environmentally-friendly suppliers, and that it would carry out studies to assess the environmental impacts on the areas around the stadiums.

In addition, the construction projects had to obtain environmental permits, as a condition for receiving financing from the country’s state-owned development bank, the BNDES.

Another BNDES requisite was for the stadiums and other installations to receive LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification granted by the U.S. Green Building Council, which is recognised by more than 130 countries.

Eight of the 12 World Cup stadiums followed sustainable construction guidelines, using water and energy saving technologies and recycled materials such as demolition waste.

But what apparently will not be sustainable is the use of the stadium after the World Cup. There is a danger that the Arena Dunas will become a white elephant because football matches in that area do not generally draw more than 6,000 people, OAS business manager Artur Couto acknowledged to IPS.

That means it would take over 3,000 matches just to pay off the construction costs.

But Couto defended the stadium as a multi-use structure. “It was built with the concept of multi-functionality, to be a living cell in the city. There are 40 dates for football games a year, but there are other uses as well, such as concerts and shows.”

Something as simple as skateboarding is lifting the lives of many Cambodian youth. Credit: Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau/IPS.

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
PHNOM PENH, Nov 30 2013 (IPS)

An array of colourful quarter pipes, bank ramps and a fun box come to life as a clutch of Cambodian youngsters do balancing tricks, kick-flips and kick turns. The all-girl session at a skating facility near the Russian Market here is facilitated by 20-year-old Kov Chansangva, popularly known as Tin.

“I’ve been doing it every day for a year. I feel happy when I get on the skateboard. It releases stress. My life has become better. I feel more responsible and have more confidence to overcome life’s obstacles,” Tin tells IPS.

Skateboarding is new in this Asian country, but it is changing lives.“One advantage that skateboarding has in a place like Cambodia is that, as a new sport, it lets girls participate more easily."

Cambodia, with its conflict-ridden past, has hundreds of thousands of children who work on the streets to fend for themselves or supplement the family income. There are an estimated 10,000 working children in Phnom Penh alone and half of them are girls.

Many youngsters in the 5-17 age group work in garbage dumps, brick factories and fish processing units. They are often at risk of being drawn into gambling and drug abuse.

In this bleak scenario, skateboarding has come as a refreshing new way of life.

Not only is it bridging the gender gap – according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2013 Gender Gap Index, Cambodia is the lowest-ranked country in the East Asia and Pacific region – it is helping put street children back in school.

“In the past, girls didn’t get involved in sports because they thought they couldn’t do what the boys could. Now as they start to see more and more women skaters, they realise they can do better than the boys,” adds Tin.

Every week, nearly 200 students come to the skateboarding facility the capital, run by a non-profit organisation called Skateistan Cambodia.

“One advantage that skateboarding has in a place like Cambodia is that, as a new sport, it lets girls participate more easily,” Alix Buck, development manager for Skateistan Cambodia, tells IPS.

The organisation uses skateboarding as a tool for empowering youngsters in the 5-18 age group. Over 50 percent of its skaters are children who work on the streets and nearly 40 percent of them are girls.

“Gender-based stereotypes are non-existent in skateboarding because the sport is new here. On the other hand, more commercialised sports like football are difficult because these have been defined as male-dominated,” Buck says.

What’s more, skateboarding is encouraging children to resume studies.

Skateistan Cambodia has several partner organisations like the Cambodian Women’s Development Agency, Damnok Toek, Friends International, Pour un Sourire D’Enfant (PSE), Tiny Toones and Transitions Global.

These provide education, counseling, shelter and health services to youth groups, including those from low-income families and those at risk of exploitation or trafficking.

So while the children are first attracted to skateboarding, gradually these organisations help them access education and healthcare.

“I want to go back to school to study and become a lawyer so I can improve my family’s life,” says Tin.

Over half the country’s 15 million people are under the age of 25. With the average income being less than a dollar a day, many people migrate from rural to urban areas. According to the National Institute of Statistics, nearly a quarter of the population consists of internal seasonal migrants, of which nearly three quarters – around 2.5 million – are under the age of 30.

“Substance abuse and gambling is a big problem for the youth,” Rath Chansopheakna, a 24-year-old skateboard and break dance instructor, tells IPS.

“Before I started studying at PSE, there was nothing to do. Most kids in Cambodia leave school and land in the streets,” he says.

PSE, a French non-profit organisation, is dedicated to providing food, healthcare, education and vocational training to children who work on the streets of cities like Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville.

“At PSE, there are kids from many different social backgrounds. But skateboarding helps break down class barriers, with poorer kids learning not to fear the well-off ones,” Chansopheakna says.

Sometimes skateboarding is combined with art.

For instance, Skateistan offers an hour of skating classes and an hour of art classes. It uses art to level the playing field as art is accessible to all children, regardless of education. Their classes include photography, film production, sculpture and painting.

“When I first started teaching kids how to skateboard, I didn’t know it would become an amazing tool to help and motivate kids in Cambodia,” Benjamin Pecqueur, Skateistan country and operations manager, tells IPS.

“We provide opportunities for kids to go to school through skateboarding. Our art-based classes give at-risk youth the opportunity to express their opinions on issues concerning them,” Pecqueur says.

He narrates an interesting story. He was working for PSE when his sister sent his old skateboard from France to Phnom Penh. Excited, he raced out with it. In 10 minutes, 20 students were around him, eager to try the new thing. That’s when the director of PSE asked Pecqueur to initiate skateboarding activity for children.

Pecqueur later joined Skateistan, which helped set up the skating facility in Phnom Penh, the only one of its kind in Cambodia. Now PSE also sends kids there to learn skateboarding.

“Youth are essential to Cambodia’s development and, given the right tools, they can play a role in shaping its future,” he says.

Young men exercising in a private gym in La Víbora neighbourhood in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Oct 9 2013 (IPS)

You can’t buy it in a store or get it in Cuba’s public health clinics. But young men who frequent gyms know who sells it and secretly inject themselves with “peanut oil,” as people in this country refer to synthol and other products that increase muscle mass.

The trend of injecting different substances to obtain huge muscles almost instantaneously seems to have taken root here. And it has already claimed victims.

“The first time I used (synthol) it gave me fever, chills and vomiting. I couldn’t sleep that night. The next day, the perimeter of my arms had grown by a centimetre,” Yosván Méndez, a schoolteacher, told IPS. He gave himself intramuscular injections for three months in 2011. “I’m never going to do it again. It’s crazy,” he said.

Méndez lost mobility and strength while the substance was encapsulated in his arms, because it takes the body time to completely absorb it. “I did something very painful without getting any results. As soon as I stopped using it, the enormous biceps that I had grown disappeared,” he said.“The first time I used (synthol) it gave me fever, chills and vomiting. I couldn’t sleep that night. The next day, the perimeter of my arms had grown by a centimetre.” — Yosván Méndez

But he considers himself lucky, because he didn’t experience after-effects.

After four months of medical treatment for his right arm, Damián Rodríguez (not his real name) was finally able to lift weights again. “I was on the ninth bottle of peanut oil when I felt discomfort after an injection,” said the 21-year-old labourer from Havana. “My arm turned red and swelled up, and grease oozed out of my skin along with pieces of dead tissue.”

Rodíguez is one of many young men who end up in surgery wards to treat abscesses, blood clots, cysts and other problems caused by the excessive use of these types of oils, pirated products, and injections that are done incorrectly or in non-sterile conditions.

The products are compounds made of fatty acids, and some contain steroids, hormones, or painkillers. The best-known is synthol or site enhancement oil, created by German bodybuilder Chris Clark, who began to experiment with different kinds of oils in 1982, according to a study published this year by a team from the University Paediatric Hospital of Matanzas in western Cuba.

Synthol, approved for external use by the health authorities of countries such as the United States, contains 85 percent fatty acids, 7.5 percent benzyl alcohol, and 7.5 percent lidocain.

Clark experimented on his own body with small doses. He discovered that he could correct the defects of certain muscles and temporarily stretch the membrane that covered them, with less risk of abscesses than soy or sesame oil.

Spreading by word of mouth and Internet, this non-medically supported practice began catching on in the world of bodybuilding in the United States and Britain, before spreading to the rest of Europe and to Latin America.

In socialist Cuba, which has a centralised economy and has endured a half-century long U.S. embargo, these products are not made or sold in state stores but do make it into the country. They circulate on the black market, which has withstood police controls for decades, as well as the penalisation of contraband with prison terms of up to three years.

After the government decided in 2010 to expand the areas where self-employment is allowed, many gyms that were operating without authorisation obtained licenses, and their numbers are growing in urban areas. Those who operate private or public gyms can be penalised if they promote or permit the use of these substances among their clients.

The phenomenon forms part of a larger one: growing preoccupation among young men in this country about their physical appearance.

At the same time, rejection of non-natural, artificial synthol-induced muscles is growing out of health, ethical, and aesthetic reasons.

Activists, medical personnel and bodybuilders are trying to raise awareness about the problem, which they say the local media has mainly ignored.

“Young people need straight talk,” medical student Eduardo Zubizarreta tells IPS. “A lot of them are using it more and more because they don’t see anything bad happening to people who use it,” he says, adding that “they need to know about the long-term effects, too,” such as premature degenerative arthritis.

Young people and adolescents who fill up the gyms are the preferred targets of the individuals selling these substances. That is why most gym operators forbid “oiling up” and try to scare away distributors who hang around the premises.

“All it’s good for is oiling your skin,” Asuan Díaz, a member of the Cuban Bodybuilding Association, told IPS. “Our organisation is against injecting yourself with these substances,” said Díaz, who since 2001 has been running a gym in the El Cerro municipality of Havana.

Díaz gives advice to young men who come to his gym showing off giant muscles, apparently inflated with these substances. “You have one foot in the hospital and another in the grave,” the seasoned bodybuilder tells them. He advocates “talking more about the issue in the media and other spaces.”

The consequences are aggravated because “there is an abundance of adulterated substances using soy oil,” he explained.

Homemade recipes for synthol are easily found on the Internet, and fake versions are distributed.

A 100-millilitre bottle of the original product can cost from 200 to 300 dollars on the international market. According to several sources consulted by IPS, in the Cuban black market the same quantity goes for 12 to 20 CUC (currency equivalent to the dollar) – a small fortune when considering that the average monthly wage in 2012 was 19 dollars.

Out of ignorance or because they can’t afford to buy synthol, some young people inject themselves with other oils.

In Matanzas, two adolescents had to undergo 12 and 28 operations, respectively, after they injected themselves daily with 10 millilitres (a complete syringe) of soy oil in their arms, according to the abovementioned study.

“This is a new phenomenon and very difficult to combat, because young people hide it,” Dr. Anileme Valdivieso told IPS. Only one patient at her health centre admitted that he had injected himself with oil, when he refused to receive medication to prevent cholera in 2012. “He was afraid of adverse effects,” Valdivieso said.

Football is gaining ground among the young in baseball-crazed Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Sep 20 2013 (IPS)

It is unusual to see Cuban sports legends in public service announcements. However, a handful of champions and rising young stars are wearing messages or appearing in TV spots against violence among men or toward women.

“We can reach our fans with campaigns like this one,” Daniel Luis, a member of Cuba’s under-20 football team, told IPS. And such campaigns “are also helpful in professional training for young athletes like me,” he added.

Luis is one of a number of athletes who have joined the Cuban branch of the Ibero-American and African Masculinities Network (RIAM), an umbrella group that brings together more than seven million men and women in 40 countries on three continents who are trying to overcome “machista” stereotypes.“Fans attack players or the rival team with racist, homophobic and machista language” -- sportscaster Alejandro Céspedes

RIAM began investigating violence in sports in 2007. This year, it has attracted dozens of athletes to participate in preventive actions. In Cuba, athletes had never been involved in anything like it.

“It has to do with social immobility. It had never occurred to us to try to involve them in campaigns like this,” RIAM Cuba coordinator Julio César González Páges told IPS.

However, it is key to do so, because “nowadays, people follow athletes much more than politicians or social leaders.”

The athletes wear pro-peace messages in games in Havana, Pinar del Río (in the west) and Matanzas (east). Cuba’s youth football team – the first in history to classify for an international championship – also brought messages against domestic abuse to this year’s FIFA U-20 World Cup in Turkey, held in June and July.

These are the public expressions, which are the result of a slower task: athletes are trained in workshops and talks at sports schools in Havana and in Pinar del Río.

To spread the word, on Aug. 30 RIAM launched the UNETE Athletes Network for non-violence against women and girls. Eugenio George, who was declared the world’s best women’s volleyball coach of the 20th century, and footballers Luis Torres, Abel Martínez and Andy Baquero were the network’s founding members.

In joining, athletes promise to be ambassadors of a culture of peace and non-violence. The network is open to all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of the UNiTE To End Violence Against Women campaign led by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

By February, a group of about 70 Cuban athletes had been created, 30 of whom are Olympic or world champions, such as high jumper Javier Sotomayor and boxer Félix Savón. The group has produced TV spots.

“It’s great to send out these messages, but curbing this problem requires a lot of time spent on educational work and strengthening laws,” says store clerk Alejandro Roque, a football fan. “The stadiums are very violent, and even more so when key baseball games are being held,” he adds.

During the 2010-2011 National Baseball Series, about 50 athletes and 26 coaches were expelled for poor behaviour.

“Fans attack players or the rival team with racist, homophobic, regionalist, and machista language,” sportscaster Alejandro Céspedes told IPS.

A homemade video that is circulating in different formats depicts a major scuffle between members of Havana’s Industriales baseball team and the Sancti Spíritus team that occurred in 2010 at the José Antonio Huelga stadium in the city of Sancti Spíritus in central Cuba.

“Our main target is men, especially young men,” said González Pagés. The strategy, therefore, is to focus on footballers, heroes of a sport that is becoming increasingly popular among young people in this baseball-crazed country.

In a survey that RIAM conducted in 2012 among 5,000 teens and young people in 18 Cuban cities, football was the favourite sport of 87 percent of the respondents.

Coach Darién Díaz told IPS: “The more that interest grows, the more the stands fill up during games. We have to do preventive work, talk to the athletes, show them audiovisual materials, and teach them how to manage situations of violence.” And the first goal is to eradicate acts of violence from the sports scene.

Perhaps because football is just now gaining ground in Cuba, this country is relatively safe from the extreme violence associated with that sport in Latin America and other regions. Brazil leads the list worldwide, with 23 football-related deaths in 2012, according to a study by the University of Salgado de Oliveira in that country.

In Latin America, hooligans are known as “barras bravas”, and the groups are often associated with the leaders of football clubs and with illegal activities, such as drug trafficking.

By Leonardo Padura
HAVANA, Aug 5 2013 (IPS)

For Cubans, baseball is not a sport, much less a game: it is almost a religion, and taken very seriously.

Baseball was brought to Cuba around the mid-19th century by young men whose families had sent them to study in cities in the United States.

Leonardo Padura

Back then, “el juego de pelota”, as it was called in Cuba, had crucial importance in different areas of the national spirituality: as a non-conformist social activity that indicated a desire for progress (United States’ modernity in contrast with the backwardness of Spain – the former colonial power); as a manifestation of national unity, because very soon it was played all over the island; and as a means of bringing together social classes and ethnic groups (because Afro-Cubans and peasants soon became devotees of the game).

It was also a performance in which sport and culture came together, thanks to the entertainment provided by “orquestas de danzones” (bands playing the Cuban national dance), the design of baseball teams’ uniforms, modernist pennants and graphics, and the artistic and journalistic literature devoted to commentating on and promoting the sport.

For Cubans, baseball has been the most played and most beloved of sports, the one that has given rise to the most legends and has carried the greatest social weight. In recent years it has also been (as it could not avoid being) a battleground for some of the most critical political, social and economic conflicts taking place in Cuban society.

Several dozen Cuban players have taken the risk of being branded “deserters” or “traitors” by official rhetoric, deciding to depart the island to try their fortunes in other leagues (especially in U.S. Major League Baseball). This has caused a commotion in Cuban society and sport, which cling to the models and politics of amateur sports followed in the socialist countries.

The departure of these players from the country has had three basic consequences.

One, for sport: a drain on regional and national teams, since a “deserter” is banned from returning to represent his or her club or country at any official event.

Another, economic: while athletes on the island earn the salaries of “amateurs”, those doing well abroad can sign contracts worth (many) millions of dollars, and even those whose performance is less outstanding can earn at least several hundred thousand dollars a year.

And thirdly, political: the Cuban government, without essentially modifying its sports policy, has begun to allow baseball players to be contracted for professional tournaments abroad (although not for the Major Leagues).

The perpetual tension of baseball politics allows this sport to express, in a quantitative way, the distance between Cubans living on the island and those who have left it in search of new horizons.

Its overwhelming influence in Cuban society and spirituality transform it, together with its cultural expressions, into one of the facets of Cuban life where any moves toward reconciliation and communication have special connotations, capable of influencing every order of life, including politics.

Recently a Cuban businessman living in Miami had the bold idea of holding two or three baseball games in the southern U.S. state of Florida among retired players of Cuba’s most emblematic club of the last 50 years, the Havana Industriales.

The novelty was that they would play on the other side of the Florida Strait and the intended participants would be former players living both within Cuba and outside the country – that is, the so-called “deserters.”

The first step would be obtaining permission from the Cuban authorities for the players to meet and play against their former teammates. Without official confirmation, it was understood that permission had been granted, but silently, as if nothing were going on.

The second step was up to the other side of the Strait: would Cuban exiles accept the presence of Cubans living in Cuba at a public event?

From the outset, former players living outside of the country were favourably disposed to the idea, to the satisfaction of most of the Cuban exiles, who looked forward to seeing their old idols again. However, a small but powerful minority of the exiles were against the proposal.

That is when the event promoters’ tortuous ordeal began, as in addition to receiving threats of all kinds, they have had to wander the city of Miami looking for a baseball field to hold the matches in. But the promoters vow that the event will be held, “even if it is in a canefield.”

To lack the capacity to see the momentous social and political significance for Cuba and its future of having émigré players and those who have remained in the country fraternise on a baseball field is an attitude of political blindness. But I believe, above all, it is an expression of a fracture of the Cuban national soul that is so deep, so charged with resentment, that not even something as sacred as baseball can easily mend it.

Too many years of deadlock, hatred, desire for revenge, and exchanges of insults and abuse (those who left the country are “gusanos” or worms, turncoats, traitors; those who stayed behind are communists, oppressors, Castro accomplices, etc.) have accumulated and still muddy the present and future of the different fragments of the broken heart of this Caribbean island nation.
(END/COPYIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

A match at the recent cricket tournament held in Pakistan's northern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan , Jul 24 2013 (IPS)

Pakistanis are no strangers to sports-related violence; in fact, many have come to expect scuffles and conflict, especially following a major cricket match. In the country’s northern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), however, cricket has become a tool to promote peace.

For over a decade, FATA and its neighbouring provinces, which form Pakistan’s tribal belt that doubles as the border with Afghanistan, have been a safe haven for Taliban militants fleeing the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Kabul and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan by NATO and its allied forces.

Countless attempts to violently crush the Taliban have failed to completely root the militants out of Pakistan’s rocky, mountainous terrain.

Desperate, the local government has turned its attention to alternative coping strategies, with sports quickly becoming a popular “weapon” in the arsenal against religious extremists, especially as a means of turning tribal youth away from militant activity.

An upbeat Shahid Shinwari, secretary of the FATA Olympic Association, told IPS he was pleasantly surprised by the massive turnout at the recent weeklong cricket tournament in which Mohmand Agency – one of seven districts that comprise the tribal areas – defeated the host Bajaur Agency.

Until 2012, Bajaur Agency was a veritable war zone, witnessing a major government offensive against the Taliban in 2008 that saw the deaths of 1,600 militants and 150 civilians and close to 5,000 injured.

Of the 300,000 civilians forced to flee the fighting, only 18,000 have returned, with most of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in makeshift settlements with little access to the most basic services such as running water and healthcare.

That this troubled district could draw a crowd for purely civilian purposes, with residents “starved for entertainment” coming out in droves to support the 16 teams on Jul. 7-14, signals a major turning point in the search for an “elusive peace” here, according to Shinwari.

He said the celebrations following Mohmand Agency’s narrow eight-run victory stood in stark contrast to the climate of terror and anxiety that has prevailed here for years.

Buoyed by FATA’s innovative approach to fighting off terrorism, a cricket team from the northeastern Afghan border province of Kunar also participated in the tournament sponsored by the Pakistani army.

Kunar’s team captain, who asked not to be named, praised the hospitality extended to his team members, adding that such events were “vital for enhancing relations between the two countries”, whose people endure similar hardships at the hands of the Taliban.

“I only hope that sports continue to promote peace,” he told IPS.

Seventeen-year-old Taj Ali, captain of the home team, told IPS that many young people from his generation joined the Taliban in the absence of outlets for their youthful energy.

Now, he says, FATA has undergone a “sea change”, with youth reveling in this newfound opportunity to “thwart the terrorists”.

About 100 small cricket teams, by far the most popular sport among tribal youth, have popped up in remote villages throughout Bajaur Agency.

Eager to capitalise on local enthusiasm, the Pakistani government last year commissioned a 4.9-million-dollar sports complex, complete with all the necessary facilities for training young athletes such as a gymnasium, cricket and football grounds, and indoor courts for basketball, volleyball, squash and badminton.

Already some 5,000 boys and girls frequent this complex, working with several trained professionals to master the sport of their choice.

Kashif Ali, a 17-year-old kabbadi player (a South Asian wrestling sport popular in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) from the Orakzai Agency, told IPS his brother was a militant for three years, but has now renounced insurgent activity in favour of football.

Kashif says he personally knows at least two-dozen other boys who have done the same, bringing the total of militants-turned-athletes to just over 150.

Trainers say sports also promise poor youth a decent income in the future, with many athletes from FATA joining national teams or professional organisations.

Regional governments are casting their nets wide enough to include women – long marginalised by the Taliban in Pakistan’s northern regions – in the wave of sports fever sweeping the region.

Khanum Bibi, a 16-year-old badminton player, came to Peshawar, capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, in search of facilities that are severely lacking in her hometown. She says women are keen to engage in sports, despite strict religious codes that have excluded them from the playing fields for years.

“Sportswomen perform better academically because outdoor activities keep them fit and healthy,” she told IPS.

Her cousin, who came to Peshawar to be trained as a table tennis player, echoed these sentiments, adding that the KP government ought to make investments in sporting facilities in rural areas so that residents can play with their “own people instead of strangers from Peshawar”.

Over 5,000 women in Pakistan’s northern provinces are part of sports teams.

KP Governor Shaukatullah Khan says the local government has now begun a hunt for 400 acres of land on which to construct a billion-dollar international sports complex – complete with grounds, courts, hostels and medical facilities – for the tribal areas, after recognising that “sports [are] the only way to defeat the Taliban.”

The governor praised FATA’s athletes for having bagged 16 medals at the recent National Games in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, despite their lack of training.

“Our players placed second in archery and third in basketball and judo at the nationwide competition, which surprised everyone,” he said, adding that the honour spoke volumes about FATA residents’ natural aptitude for sports.

Frontier Corps Major General Ghayyur Mahmood, in charge of military operations for FATA, told IPS that sports have also been crucial in efforts to improve law and order in the region, by promoting peace and “a sense of normalcy”.

“We have several major events in the pipeline, for which we are putting in place modern indoor and outdoor facilities [capable of hosting] over 20 games,” Shinwari said.

The most eagerly anticipated of these gatherings is the upcoming 11-day all-agency FATA club tournament, slated to begin on Aug. 14, during which the winning clubs in this past April’s intra-agency competitions will vie for the top slots in basketball, volleyball, cricket, kabbadi, badminton, squash, hockey, kushti (a form of local wrestling), netball, judo and karate.

Kashif Ali and his brother are training hard for the games, hoping to bring glory to their agency and win the respect of their family and community members.

The recently rebuilt Maracaná stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Rio de Janeiro government CC BY 3.0

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 9 2013 (IPS)

With three years to go to the 2016 Olympic Games, hundreds of athletes in the Brazilian city that will host the games were evicted from the only public track field, and have had nowhere to train for the past six months.

The mega-construction projects underway to provide Rio de Janeiro with the infrastructure needed to host the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games have even affected athletes who aspire to compete in 2016.

“They decided to demolish the only public athletics stadium in the state of Rio de Janeiro. And the sports community was not even given advance notice,” the president of the state athletics federation, Carlos Alberto Lancetta, told IPS.

The stadium he was referring to, the Célio de Barros arena, was built in the 1970s as part of the Maracaná sports complex, which was inaugurated for the 1950 world football championship.

The iconic Maracaná stadium, a symbol of Rio, is undergoing a privatisation process, and its administration will be granted in concession to a consortium of private companies for 35 years.

The Célio de Barros athletics arena, covering 25,000 square metres, had a capacity for 9,000 spectators and a track that was upgraded for the 2007 Pan American Games.

The 800 athletes and students who worked out every day at the complex now have nowhere to train, because the concession involves the demolition of the track, the Olympic swimming pool and even a public school that operates within the complex.

Several athletes with Olympic aspirations had to abandon the complex to train in public parks and military installations, Lancetta complained.

“The Olympic city is losing its athletes. The situation is chaotic; Brazil’s track and field discipline is dying,” he said.

Lancetta, who has been in the field of athletics since 1962, is a former coach who now presides over the Rio de Janeiro federation. He says the discipline has never faced such bad conditions in Brazil as it does today.

Of the 600 athletes who used to train in the stadium, 150 were high performance and several competed in the 2012 Olympic Games in London, he said.

The consortium that won the concession plans to build a new athletics arena and Olympic swimming pool. Meanwhile, the athletes were transferred to the João Havelange Olympic Stadium, popularly known as Engenhão, which opened in 2007 and was leased for 20 years to the Botafogo football club.

But in March, the authorities temporarily shut down Engenhão because of structural flaws in the roof.

The improvised solution found for the athletes was to send them to train in public parks and military installations.

Lancetta said the Célio de Barros stadium should not have been closed down until a new Olympic arena and pool had been built.

But they are not set to be completed until a month ahead of the Olympic Games, and 30 months after the bidding opens in August.

This is “genocide against Olympic sports, and we can’t do anything to stop it. The Olympic Games aren’t doing Brazil’s athletes any favours,” said Lancetta.

Jan. 9 was a day that many track and field athletes and coaches will never forget, because when they showed up at the Maracaná complex, they found that the doors were closed.

Former athlete and coach Edneida Freire was not even able to get inside to collect the materials she uses in the activities she carries out with children, adolescents and the disabled, partly with the aim of discovering new talent.

“They evicted us,” Freire told IPS. “They didn’t even give us any notice; we just got here one day and the gate was closed.”

She feels she is in mourning because many of her students can no longer attend the classes she now gives in public squares, because of the lack of safety.

“Many of them showed promise,” she said. “The great majority were boys and girls from the favelas (shantytowns), and some had problems with the law, and they were practicing sports as a socio-educational activity. All of that is at risk today.”

But Freire still hopes to return someday to Célio de Barros, after the new complex is built. “We couldn’t be any worse off than we are now; we have nowhere to train and compete,” she said.

The “people’s World Cup and Olympics committee”, which groups some 50 social movements, NGOs and trade unions, as well as academics, believes there is still time to turn the situation around, at least partly.

“They’re going to build a parking lot and shopping centre there. They want to boost property values in the area. They announced that they would build another building, but they won’t. It’s all just empty promises,” Committee member Marcelo Edmundo told IPS.

Top school to be closed

The 350 students at a public school that has functioned in the Maracaná complex for nearly 50 years are also facing imminent eviction.

The Friedenreich municipal school – named after football player Arthur Friedenreich (1892-1969) – is ranked the fourth best public school in the state.

It is not clear where the students and teachers are to go. They have to be off the school premises by year-end.

“We will go when the company granted the concession builds us a new school. They want to drag us to another school,” said Carlos Ehlers, a representative of the school’s committee of parents, students and alumni.

Ehlers said one of the biggest problems is that the school has a classroom for students with disabilities.

There is a lack of dialogue with the construction company, he said. “The concessionaire has already decided that we have to go. They said there was no chance of us staying here. But today, I think we have a 50 percent probability of avoiding eviction.”

The conditions of the concession, presented in November 2012, stated that the company that won the bid was to invest 210 million dollars in the complex by 2016, including the demolition and reconstruction of the pool, the Célio de Barros track and gymnasium, and the school.

The bidding process, which was won by a consortium made up of the Brazilian companies IMX, Odebrecht and AEG Administração de Estádios, was challenged in court.

The prosecutor’s office argued that there were irregularities in the plans for the administration of the complex, and questioned the need to demolish the existing installations.

Recently reconstructed Maracaná stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Governo do Rio de Janeiro CC BY 3.0

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 17 2013 (IPS)

As Brazil prepares to host several sporting mega-events, human rights abuses and authoritarian interventions by the authorities are going on behind the scenes, favouring major urbanisation projects and stadium remodelling, a study says.

The state has forced almost 30,000 families across the country to leave their homes, according to the Comité Popular da Copa e das Olimpíadas (World Cup and Olympics People’s Committee), made up of around 50 social movements, researchers, NGOs and trade unions.

The Committee’s report, “Megaeventos e Violações dos Direitos Humanos no Rio de Janeiro” (Mega-events and Human Rights Abuses in Rio de Janeiro), says that in this city alone, which will host the 2016 Olympic Games, 3,000 families have already been displaced from their homes and another 7,800 are facing eviction.

The forced displacement of thousands of people and the privatisation of public areas constitute the dark side of Brazil’s sports projects, claims the study which was presented in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday May 15.

Brazil will host the FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cup, which is to be held in 12 cities, in 2014. A dress rehearsal for this will be the ninth FIFA Confederations Cup, a tournament between the top national teams from each continent, from Jun. 15-30 this year.

“Our fears are being confirmed. The benefits and social legacy that are so widely trumpeted really hide a dark legacy: an elitist, segregated and unequal society. It is a sad thing to see,” said Orlando Alves dos Santos Jr., a sociologist and urban planner and one of the study coordinators.

In the view of dos Santos Jr., a researcher at the Observatório das Metrópoles and the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning and Research at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the multi-million dollar investments carried out under the cloak of preparations for the World Cup and the Olympic Games go beyond the scope of sports facilities and are part of a grand project of urban reform.

Interventions in cities, like evictions, are having an immense impact in terms of social exclusion, the report says.

“We show that poor people are being relocated outside the areas of investment, which are concentrated in the centre, south and north of Rio de Janeiro. These are areas where real estate has vastly increased in value,” dos Santos Jr. said.

He said the rise in housing prices has been largely based on the displacement of the poor towards the outskirts of the city.

“All this has been accompanied by a complete lack of information for the evicted families, as well as coercion, the use of violence and human rights abuses. What is happening in the city is extremely serious,” he said.

Christopher Gaffney, a U.S. geographer who studies public policies on sports and security for big events, told IPS that evictions and the privatisation of public spaces represented a great failure of democracy in this country of over 195 million people.

“The policy is a big step backwards. It represents a reversal of values that eliminates the role of government as the guarantor of essential citizen services, like housing and culture. Forced evictions are a clear violation of the right to housing. Real estate speculation is rife in Rio,” he said.

Gaffney, who is also a member of the People’s Committee and a researcher with the Observatório das Metrópoles, said that there is no “coherent practical criterion” being applied in the eviction of thousands of families, and that those affected by the policy complain of a lack of dialogue, transparency and information.

“The uncertainty associated with being made homeless creates constant panic, and terror methods are being used to expel these people from their communities at any price,” he said.

“There have been cases where families have been told they must vacate their homes, without any time for them to collect their belongings; and others where their eviction has been negotiated right alongside the bulldozers that were ready to demolish the houses. This is enormous psychological pressure,” he said.

Only a few families received a decent house after their eviction, Gaffney said. The authorities provide indemnities for expropriation that are not enough to buy a new house, or they put families into housing plans that have requirements that many of them cannot meet, such as that the head of household must have a formal sector job and a bank account.

The report argues that the real Olympic legacy in Rio de Janeiro will be that of “an even more unequal city, which will exclude thousands of families and destroy entire communities…a project that will appropriate the majority of benefits for a select few economic and social agents.”

One of the main criticisms is the privatisation of public spaces worth millions of dollars. In Rio de Janeiro, sporting facilities like the legendary Maracaná stadium are being renovated, as well as infrastructure and transport facilities, and urban remodelling projects have mushroomed.

The initial budget for investment in the city for the upcoming events has risen by 95 percent, from 1.1 billion dollars to 2.1 billion.

Construction and renovation of stadiums represent nearly 25 percent of this total. Maracaná stadium, where the finals of the 2014 World Cup will be played and where the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games will be held two years later, is the focus of controversy because it has been granted in concession to a private consortium for 35 years.

The cost of the works undertaken was 600 million dollars, compared with the 370 million dollars initially envisaged. The concession of the stadium into private hands for the first time led the public prosecutor’s office to launch an investigation into the state’s investments for the sporting mega-events.

In Gaffney’s view, the sporting facilities will be transformed from cultural spaces into consumption centres.

“Stadiums are the platforms where local culture is expressed in football. It would be virtually cultural assassination to substitute faithful, traditional fans with ‘clients’ or higher class consumers,” he said.

Moreover, the private initiative will also lead to the demolition of a major aquatic park, a public school, an athletics track and a prison, in order to build two multi-storey car parks for 2,000 vehicles, a heliport, a shopping mall and a football museum.

“This shows the vulnerability of Brazilian democracy, even as Brazil is trying to build stronger institutions. The FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games are accelerating anti-democratic processes,” Gaffney said.

Dos Santos Jr. said that society has taken the multi-million dollar renovation passively, and that construction of the Maracaná complex “will bring about the destruction of multi-purpose facilities that were used to practise other sports.

“It will only be a space for show and a commercial centre. Athletes in other disciplines will not have a place to train. And the entrance tickets will be too expensive,” he said.

The People’s Committee intends to present its study to public authorities, FIFA, the International Olympic Committee and international organisations such as the United Nations through its Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing.

After another winter of erratic and disappointing snowfall, 75 of the U.S.’s top professional winter athletes are calling on President Barack Obama to take stronger measures to curb climate change.

In a letter released Tuesday, the athletes, who included five Olympic medallists, as well as a half a dozen world champions in skiing and other winter sports, noted that the 12-billion-dollar-a-year U.S. winter tourism industry has already been hard hit by the decline in snowfall and the steady rise in average winter temperatures that most climate scientists attribute to global warming.

Among other actions, the group, organised by a six-year-old, 50,000-member non-profit organisation called “Protect Our Winters” (POW), is calling on Obama to issue tough new regulations on U.S. power plants, the largest source of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.

It also urged Obama to reject the proposed Keystone XL pipeline -the biggest current focus of activist efforts to fight climate change – that, if approved, would pump oil produced from Canadian tar sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

“Mr. President, it’s time to force our transition to clean energy, (and) these are the first big steps and we need your leadership,” according to the letter, which will be delivered personally to Obama Thursday when POW founder and snow-boarder Jeremy Jones will be honoured at a White House ceremony along with other non-governmental community activists.

“For real change to happen, it needs to happen at the White House and on Capitol Hill,” Jones said in a teleconference that featured four other winter sports champions, including Olympic silver medallist and four-time X games gold medallist snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, and world free-skiing champions Kit Deslauriers and Ingrid Backstrom.

Jones added that the mobilisation of all of the athletes in support of climate change activism was also aimed at younger sports enthusiasts who, as consumers, could exert pressure on sporting-goods companies to conduct their business in a more environmentally responsible fashion.

“One message we give to (youth), is, ‘hey, when you do make a purchase, really do research on what the company stands for,’” he said.

With The North Face apparel company, POW has created the Alliance for Climate Education which since 2011 has sent its star athletes to 36 high schools to spread the word to some 15,000 students.

The athletes’ action comes amidst an apparent resurgence in public concern about climate change after a decade in which the issue received relatively little attention.

While the 9/11 attacks and the wars that followed dominated the public agenda in the early part of the decade, the 2008 financial crisis and its impact on the economy effectively put environmental issues on the back burner.

Meanwhile, the effective takeover of the Republican Party by so-called “climate sceptics”, as well as continued heavy lobbying by the powerful coal, oil and gas industries, effectively put paid to any prospects that Obama could get major reform legislation through Congress.

In his latest State of the Union address, Obama, who had been relatively quiet about climate change during his first term, said he would take stronger action in his second term.

He warned that “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations (from climate change), I will.” Acting through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), his administration subsequently set tougher-than-expected energy-efficiency standards for automobiles and future power plants.

The weather itself, especially extreme events, such as Hurricane Sandy that inundated lower Manhattan and much of the New Jersey coastline last fall, appears to have both helped reverse the decline in public concern about the effects of climate change and encouraged Obama to take a more aggressive stance.

Indeed, in his second Inaugural Address, Obama referred to the “devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms” – all of which have gained significant attention over the past couple of years in the news media which, unlike the president, however, generally refrained from attributing them to climate change.

While those extreme events have gained the headlines, the impact of warming on the more remote and sparsely populated mountain regions and communities of the country – and specifically the generally lighter or more inconsistent snowfall — has received much less attention.

POW last year teamed up with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to produce a 33-page study on this question, entitled “Climate Impacts on the Winter Tourism Economy in the United States”.

Increasingly, it noted, “there have been all-or-nothing winters – blizzards in some places, only a dusting all season-long in others.”

“For those whose livelihood depends upon a predictable winter season, such unpredictability and lack of snow can translate into a precipitous fall in revenue, an early economic indicator of what climate change looks like,” according to the report, which found that 212,000 jobs were either directly or indirectly supported by the winter tourism industry nationwide.

Among other conclusions, it found winter resort communities, such as Aspen, Colorado, and Squaw Valley, California, increasingly threatened by the changing climate patterns, especially the increasingly later onset of substantial snowfall and the earlier melt-off of the snowpack.

In the 2011-12 winter, about half of all ski areas opened late and closed early, resulting in serious losses in revenue and employment.

Deslauriers, who is famous for climbing the world’s highest mountains in order to ski down them, noted major changes around her community in the Grand Teton Mountains, a sub-range of the Rocky Mountains, in Wyoming.

“We just have a few small pieces of glaciers left, and the rain is lasting longer at lower elevations, so our snowpack is melting faster,” she said.

On a recent trip to the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, she added, Native American elders had told her about the shortening of their winters, too.

Indeed, these trends – the shortening of winter seasons and the retreat of glaciers at high elevations – are not confined to North America. In the Andes of South America and Tanzania’s Mt. Kilamanjaro, where snowpack and glaciers are a vital source of freshwater, much larger populations are threatened by global warming.

“There’s still time for the winter sports world to stand together,” said Deslauriers.

Victorine Fomum, Cameroon’s 2005 African table tennis champion, was given 25 dollars by the government for her achievement. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Aug 22 2012 (IPS)

Victorine Fomum is Cameroon’s 2005 African table tennis champion. She often used to “train without rackets, without balls, without appropriate clothing and without good tables.” But despite this, she won gold at the 2005 African Nations Championship. And as a reward for her achievement the government handed her a cheque – for 25 dollars.

“You can imagine what happens at local level. I used to frequently earn 10 dollars as prize money – for winning gold! If I was not also a civil servant, maybe I might have fled too,” she told IPS.

She was referring to the seven Cameroonian athletes who disappeared from the London Olympic Games on Aug. 7. Fomum understands first hand why they did so.

“Training conditions here are horrible,” she said, “The athletes certainly have a right to desire better conditions.”

The athletes – five boxers, a swimmer and a footballer – disappeared from the Olympic village, and later resurfaced requesting asylum in the United Kingdom. They said they did not wish to return to their West African home nation because of the difficult training conditions.

One of the boxers, Thomas Essomba, told the BBC that his country was not able to offer him the opportunities that the UK can. “All we demand is to become champions. England offers the best opportunities for us. The most important issue now is to find sponsors and join boxing clubs,” he said.

Even football, the country’s most popular sport – in 1990 the country became the first African team to reach a football World Cup quarterfinal – has bad infrastructure and suffers from a lack of funds.

Cameroon is currently ranked 59th in the world by the International Football Federation, FIFA – eight spots ahead of South Africa, which has significantly more resources. South Africa will host the 2013 African Nations Cup at a cost of 400 million dollars, 300 million of which will be paid for by the country’s Football Association.

But back in Cameroon, Simon Lyonga, a sports analyst with the state broadcaster Cameroon Radio Television, told IPS that local football players earn a mere 25 dollars a month.

And while other athletes do not earn salaries here, local competitions award low prize money. Gold medallists in Cameroon frequently earn as little as six dollars.

Even in a country where, according to the World Bank, 40 percent of Cameroonians live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, six dollars in prize money is considered very low.

“These are not conditions that would keep any youth around,” Fondo Sikod, a professor of economics at the University of Yaounde II, told IPS.

Fomum knows all about the limited financial reward. She pointed to her display shelf of more than 50 trophies, most of them awards for winning first place.

“On the basis of all this, you may think that I am rich. But I tell you, all the training only ended with the glory of winning. It has very little to do with financial reward, which is quite frustrating.”

The president of the Cameroon Olympic Committee, Kalkaba Malboum, admitted that the country lacked good training facilities.

“We don’t have good training conditions as in other countries. As a result, our athletes will not hesitate to leave for other countries with better training conditions that can improve their performance, meet their dreams of becoming professional and earn more money to improve their living conditions as well as those of their families,” he said on state television on Aug. 10.

One example of a lack of good infrastructure is the Ahmadou Ahidjo Stadium, which was constructed to host the African Nations Cup in 1972. It is still Cameroon’s main stadium, even though it is frequently suspended from international use by FIFA because it has not been maintained.

“The failure to build sport infrastructure in the country is just a result of the lack of political will, and not the absence of financial resources,” Lyonga said.

He said sports, particularly football, brought financial resources into the country. Part of these resources, Lyonga said, is meant to go towards the construction and maintenance of local sports infrastructure.

“In 2010, Cameroon got 800,000 dollars from its participation in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. How the money was used is anyone’s guess,” he said.

Cameroon is expected to register economic growth of 5.2 percent for 2012, up from 4.8 percent in 2011. And Malboum hopes that the government will invest more in the sports sector.

Currently, the Chinese government is co-financing the 661-million-dollar construction costs of four stadia. In addition, there are plans to construct a National Olympics Preparation Centre in Obala, on the outskirts of the country’s capital Yaoundé.

Meanwhile, athletes here hope that the mindset towards sport sponsorship will change. Currently local athletes do not receive sponsorship.

“Each athlete struggles on his or her own,” Fomum said. She added that while Cameroonians loved sports and winning, they balked at the idea of investing in it. So she had to use her own money to pursue her sporting career.

“My dad told me that achievers must always brave the odds.”

He dreamed of one day running on international athletic tracks and worked hard for seven long years to make this a reality.

Tanveer Hussain, one of Kashmir’s top athlete’s, ran a 100-kilometre “protest” marathon to bring attention to government apathy towards sports. Credit: Sana Altalf/IPS

But today, despite Tanveer Hussain becoming the top athlete in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, his dream is quickly vanishing in the face of government apathy towards sports.

“Every time I won a marathon, all I got was a pat on my shoulder and false promises. The government has never supported me even though I am (one of the) top athletes in the state,” Tanveer, a 12^th-grade student, told IPS.

Tanveer has won numerous long-distance races, the most recent being the 42-kilometre Jammu Marathon organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, in which he outran 17,000 athletes.

“The authorities don’t organise any sporting events; the only competitions are those hosted by local banks or the police. There are no avenues for me, or other players, to reach national or international levels,” Tanveer told IPS.

“As a top runner in the State, the government should send me to participate in nationals, which would bring pride to the Valley. But no one takes any interest.”

A few weeks ago, Tanveer even ran a 100-kilometre “protest” marathon, but his action failed to move authorities.

“I am awfully depressed, watching my dream die. I am unable to decide if I should continue with the sport or quit.”

Tanveer is certainly not alone in his predicament. Scores of other athletes around Kashmir are faced with a similar decision: to follow their passion to master a sport, or give it up in favour of more “realistic” prospects.

Eleven years of experience failed to fetch Riyaz Ahmad a professional career in cycling, forcing him to abandon the sport forever. He said a lack of infrastructure and inadequate funding kept him and other cyclists from achieving success.

“We do not have a proper sports policy in Kashmir, which is a major drawback. There is no professional training, and no one to organise participation in different tournaments,” he told IPS.

A dearth of coaches in the Valley is yet another deterrent, Riyaz added. Often, senior sportspeople are forced to train youngsters. “We don’t even have a proper athletics track,” he said.

Mushtaq Ahamd, who gave up cycling four years ago, asked bitterly, “How could we run after something that will give us no job or financial security? No one ever cared for our talents and hard work.”

Almost all sportspeople in Kashmir are facing tough times due to government negligence. Experienced athletes are quitting in droves and disinterest in sports is rampant among youth in the valley.

“Our children who want to make sports their career have no security. Sports is the last thing the government thinks of,” Nayeema (not her real name), an international-standard sportswoman hailing from the Valley, told IPS.

Authorities have little to no interest in the condition of facilities or the quality of athletes, and funding is scarce, she lamented.

The Jammu and Kashmir State Sports Council, an autonomous body responsible for providing funds to various sports associations and monitoring their work, is also tasked with organising tournaments, training players, upgrading infrastructure and providing all necessary assistance to sportspeople.

Forty-eight associations are affiliated with the Council, and thereby entitled to government funding. Other non-affiliated associations, which numbers in the hundreds, receive no state subsidies.

Through associations affiliated with the Council, each of Kashmir’s 22 districts is allocated just 10,000 rupees (about 180 dollars) for training junior, sub-junior and senior players of all sports.

“We have hundreds of players from each district. How can this meagre amount suffice to train and support all our budding players?” Nayeema asked.

“All players suffer here, in varying degrees,” Nayeema told IPS. “The rights of players are undermined. Kashmir could produce hundreds of world-class players if only the government took them seriously.”

Ironically, the chief minister of the state, Omar Abdullah, heads the State Sports Council.

But “even after repeatedly pressing on authorities to improve sports in Kashmir, nothing is done. Our valuable talent and hard work is wasted,” Rashid Ahmad Choudhary, Kashmir’s international fencer, told IPS.

Nayeema remarked that though the Sports Council disburses funds to associations, there is no monitoring on how this money is being used.

“Whatever funds are released should be properly utilised. But with the condition of sports deteriorating, one wonders where all the money goes,” she said.

According to the official sources, rampant corruption in virtually every aspect of civil and political life in Kashmir undoubtedly affects the sports arena as well.

Afzal, an administrative officer of the Sports Council, admitted that inadequate funds have a negative effect on sports in the Valley, adding that the government has been asked to increase funds.

(END)

The Western Saharwi football team. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
RABUNI CAMP, Western Algeria, Jun 25 2012 (IPS)

The football teams are back in their refugee camps in Algeria, and no, FIFA has taken no note of this tournament. And the television cameras are all at the Euro cup.

These boys played well enough, even if nobody was around to watch. “They would slip in the first matches but this is understandable because they had never ever played football on grass before,” Mohamed Sid Ahmed Bugleida, sports director of the Sahrawi ministry of youth and sports tells IPS. Few know of this ministry in the Western Sahara, let alone of the tournament.

The Western Sahara football team he manages has just returned from Iraqi Kurdistan after taking part in the fourth tournament of the Nouvelle Fédération-Board (NFB). Also known unofficially as the Non-FIFA-Board, this is a football association established in December 2003.

It is made up of teams that represent nations, dependencies, minorities, unrecognised states, stateless peoples, regions and ‘micronations’ not affiliated to FIFA. But it does seek to work with FIFA to acquire membership for its teams eventually.

The politics of dispossession hangs over this Cup. Western Sahara became victim of a decolonisation process interrupted in 1976 when Spain – its former colonial power – left the territory in the hands of Morocco and Mauritania. Morocco now controls almost all the territory, larger than the size of Britain, except for the largely uninhabited and economically useless desert portion.

Today, the vast majority of the Sahrawi population – of between 200,000-250,000 according to UN sources – lives in refugee camps in the Tinduf region in Western Algeria in the Sahara.

“We faced several problems in displaying our flag due to Moroccan pressure on the Kurdish regional government. We were at loggerheads with the local authorities but the Kurdish audience openly expressed their solidarity and warmth,” adds Bugleida from his office in the building of the Ministry of Youth and Sports in Rabuni refugee camp in Western Algeria. At its entrance, a plaque thanks the town of Granadilla (Tenerife, Spain) for its “generous aid”.

In a room nearby, the 20 players from the Saharawi squad in their green tracksuits with the initials SADR (Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic) on their backs, are celebrating with Algerian biscuits and instant coffee after their return from the tournament earlier this month.

Player Cori Maaruf, 26, cannot hide his joy. “I am proud to have written a page in the history of our people,” he tells IPS. “It’s the first time we attended such a tournament but we achieved fourth place among a total of nine teams.

“And take into account that we only trained for five days before the tournament, and always on sand. There are no proper football grounds here in the refugee camps.”

Salah Ahmed, with three goals to his credit, is the top scorer in the local squad. He scored against other non-nations: two against Darfur and one against Occitania, a culturally homogeneous region in southern Europe across France and Italy.

“Whether one day we can play on behalf of a fully recognised sovereign state depends only on god’s will,” says this 24-year-old born in the Dajla refugee camp 170 kilometres southeast of Rabuni. Until then, he says he will carry the Saharawi national flag with pride wherever he goes.

“Much more important than any sport result is to show the world that we exist, that there is nation called Western Sahara that struggles to survive after decades of unfair and brutal occupation,” says Said Saleh, a 21-year-old footballer after his second trip outside the refugee camps.

The first, he says, was to Spain after he was invited by a family in Madrid. After the abduction of three aid workers – two Spaniards and one Italian – in the Western Sahara seven months ago, and the financial crisis in the Eurozone, the number of summer visits to Spain have declined, together with international aid to the refugees.

These young players have only recently started to represent their people in football stadiums. But the Polisario Front, outlawed in the Morocco-controlled part of Western Sahara, is recognised by the UN as the legitimate representative of the Western Sahrawis since 1979. Polisario officials expressed concern to IPS over diminishing aid over in the last few months.

Mohamed Molud, minister of youth and sports, stresses the strong encouragement the squad brings to the young in a difficult environment. “It’s far from easy to generate any enthusiasm towards sports in this environment and with a total lack of resources.”

Renting a proper football ground from the Algerian government, and organising matches against local teams, or even neighbouring countries such as Mauritania, are some of the proposals being considered.

For the time being, both staff and players look forward to the next NFB tournament in 2014. There were no surprises in the 2012 tournament: the cup stayed in Kurdistan – four of their players also play for the Iraqi national team.

(END)