The city’s mosquitos host a virus that can caused deformities in children and some of its planned sporting facilities and general infrastructure are not yet completed.

Athletes in the city for acclimatisation and test events have been robbed.

The much vaunted return of golf to the Olympic program seems to take a hit every day – with its male players seemingly have greater last-minute concerns about heading in Rio than any athletes of either gender in any other sport.

Brazil has changed presidents after the incumbent was impeached.

And then there is the small matter, completely out of the host country’s hands, of Russia’s non-participation in athletics and weightlifting – two sports in which the power-house nation was a major player in London four years ago.

There are rumours that big international travel agencies that have traditionally been virtually the only conduit for foreigners to obtain Olympic tickets – as part of an accommodation and travel package, are handing back some of their allocations.

But as has been said many times before, sometimes in even more difficult times, the Games must go on.

And so they should – at the very least for those many thousands of athletes who do want to be a part of the Games of the thirty-first Olympiad.

Not that their health and safety should be compromised one little bit in order that they get the chance to fulfil the dreams they have held for the past four years or longer.

Much of the drama goes back to the ridiculous expectations which the International Olympic Committee place on organising committees in the first place.

If the demands were not so high, the hosts would be better placed to manage the unexpected closer to Games time.

At least this time the IOC has had the good sense to back-off on several occasions when the locals simply put up their hands and said they could not finance or finish certain projects.

Yet there are bright spots. Australia’s chef-de-mission, Kitty Chiller reckons that the Games village is the best she has seen. And contrary to first impressions of many, the current weeding out of a plethora of doping cheats should enhance, rather than diminish, many events.

So much of what has transpired – both in terms of the delivery of these Games on the ground and the revelations in the fight against doping, has emphasised however that there must be fundamental change in the approach taken to both by the IOC and the international sporting federations.

But even this week when the IOC actually had the ticker to back-up the IAAF’s strong stance on Russian ineligibility, president Thomas Bach was still forced to be political rather than just plain tough.

Instead of agreeing with the IAAF proposal that Russian athletes sanctioned to compete would do so as non-aligned, Bach prevaricated and insisted they would do so under their own flag.