Rio, by the sea-o

The Rio Olympics, whose opening ceremony takes place later today, starts amongst the now almost obligatory scandals and tensions: Russian athletes already banned for doping, the Brazilian president suspended for alleged financial misdemeanours, sporting facilities and accommodation only just built or sub-standard, working-class communities displaced and protests violently dispersed by riot police.

It's not quite up there with Mexico City in 1968, where the games opened just ten days after the army had shot dead hundreds of protesting students, but as ever there's a dissonance between watching and enjoying the sporting events which individual athletes have trained hard for in the last four years and the violence, kickbacks and corporate control you know is going on in the background, all overseen of course by the aristocratic IOC which only just comes behind football's world governing body FIFA in the number of corruption allegations levelled against it.