(In British- Scrapheap Poo Pit Challenge)

To start on a positive note, Michael Phelps is the leading Medal Winner participating in this Olympics. He's a swimmer (I swim) and has demonstrated remarkable longevity in his sport. He's anti-Steroid (well, never tested positive) and claims he's never been in a race without dopers. So U-S-A U-S-A to you.

On the other hand it could have been Ibtihaj Muhammad who fences in a hijab which is an unfair advantage in that it's a visible distraction and may cause you to misdirect your strike out of the scoring area (hey, I fence too).

Downhill from this minor distraction? Well, it's a mite grassy and rocky this time of year but I have some boards I can trash. Sure. Why not?

On almost the same level, why exactly is "Golf" an Olympic sport? There is nothing more deadly dull on the face of the earth than watching golf in person, do it once and you'll appreciate the brisk, nay- frenetic, pace of U.S. television coverage.

Let's pick up some speed.

If a section of the Stadium (or the whole thing) doesn't crumble into dust tonight I'll be sadly disappointed. The corruption and shoddiness of the construction has only cost 10s of worker's lives and they are slaving in the heat, double shifting for paltry wages. It would be easy to blame them for the inferior quality of the Olympic Village and other projects but it's really design flaws and cheap (sub-standard) materials to pad the graft. Somewhere between 25% and 30% of the Olympic Village is uninhabitable, Australia got burned out of their area, Team USA rented an Ocean Liner (yup, one of them floating hotels).

The competition sites are the same. I really expect Michael Phelps to get sucked down in a maelstrom when the pool bottom goes out like a drain plug at the bottom of a bathtub.

And that's not counting of course the 10s of thousands of poor people, living in slums, who had their homes bulldozed for parking lots to keep the riff raff away.

Great Job Brazil! Lest we forget they're in the middle of a Constitutional coup where the disloyal compromise Vice President who colluded with Congressional and Judicial branch members to manufacture some charges and impeach the President. Remind you of Clinton? Perhaps Corbyn.

Your Police, when they're not out on strike because you don't pay them, are an occupying army sweeping streets in riot gear with shields, batons, and teargas. Despite that theft and more violent crimes are endemic (did I mention that Austrailia got burned out? Well, the firemen who put it out boosted whatever looked loose).

Brazil's economy is based on extractive industries and with Oil leading the way the primary export commodities have declined in value. Once a Brazil, Russia, India, China of emerging nations, it is now wracked with Recession (since we're too well bred to call it a flat out Depression) with no end in sight. There are a lot of people who are pretty damn poor while wealth shoots straight to the top. It's not that they pump less, it's that they have to sell it so cheaply.

So you can hardly blame the firemen, they haven't been paid just like the cops and they consider it a gratuity anyway. My advice? Tip generously and at every opportunity. Some people live on tips.

In any event Brazil is as unstable as Vesuvius; so much so that the Torch Relay, usually a shameless celebration of corporate sponsorship (the imprinted water bottles get expensed as Public Relations or Advertising), has been interrupted and diverted constantly by demonstrations against the Coup government, extinguishing the torch on several occasions (don't worry, they have a spare and there are emergency instructions on how to re-kindle the sacred flame of amateur sportsmanship which probably don't involve a BIC).

As an Olympic athlete you've already dedicated years and years of torture and pain to your particular discipline so a little more doesn't seem that big a deal. Well, welcome to Rio. I've already talked about your miserable accommodations which would shame a Stalinist and sink to levels only monopolist capitalism can descend (c'mon, even the Romans got toilets right). All that shit that doesn't ooze out between the tiles because the pipes are not hooked up slides right on down to Guanabara Bay where the open water events will take place. In addition to having the boat ramp collapse (ahem) there is also watching for the really big turds (which always rise to the top for some reason). You're basically paddling around in diarrhea soup which, in addition to the usual cornucopia of anti-anti-biotic super bugs and more tractable parasites, have the special attraction of flesh eating Amoeba.

I expect to see some unlucky capsized sailor emerge a grotesquely mutated Creature from the Black Lagoon.

He can storm Copacabana Beach, the filthiest in the World, in a kind of environmentalist irony and still not be the weirdest thing to wash up (tidal toilet ring; used condoms, needles, cigarette butts, broken glass) in front of the Beach Volleyball site.

No, that would be the dismembered body parts.

It's a bum rap. A mob hit. Capsized Sailor Creature dies in a hail of gunfire from the rapid response anti-terrorist teams (if they're not on strike because they haven't been paid) and tragically breathes his last-

"Rosebud."

That's not stolen, it's an homage.

Frighteningly the beach is not the scariest part of Rio (did I mention rampant theft?), That would be Rio itself. Air quality is not that far from Peking levels, and you have Zika and dozens of other tropical diseases.

Of course you're up against dopers. Michael has never raced without one (Hmmm). I give the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency full credit, along with the individual Sport governing bodies, for allowing Russian athletes to participate in the absence of credible evidence they were Juicing. Association is not guilt.

Now the bad side. It's pretty much a given that hosting an Olympic Games is mostly a several $Billion money pit and cities are increasingly unwilling to host them. This qualifies, in IOC terms, as a big deal.

Why? Because we'll lose this 100 year old quadrennial celebration of ideals of fair play and virtue in excellence that were musty in Victoria's day? No, because the board members of the IOC will lose the $Multi-Million graft they grift being bribed for their votes in a contested election.

This shall not stand! It is an affront to amateurism! Might as well get myself a gig at FIFA (regrettably only the second most corrupt institution, recruit for destiny boys).

Finally (for now) we have the the perversion of coaches. I think we've known for years that the personal relationship between exceptionally limber girls and their middle age mentors is kind of... creepy. This is somewhat less surprising than Ailes.

I'll tell you, being a coach is hard because you have to tell people to do things you can't, won't, couldn't do in the first place. If you are any good at all you're forging bonds of trust and providing direction. To abuse this relationship is the worst kind of crime.

I think we've reached the bottom. Shredded it.