[speeder]

I am Brazillian and we had that reaction too.

The World Cup was more popular, but still wasn't widely accepted as some people think it would be.

The Olympics was outright hated, so many stupid shenanigans happened there (like demolishing a NEW stadium, to build another identical one, just because the seatings positions were slightly bad).

So no, you don't need to be first world to recognize how stupid hosting the Olympics is.

[dfxm12]

just because the seatings positions were slightly bad).

A lot of the IOC (and probably FIFA) requirements seem silly. Pretty soon, we're going to see the Olympics go back and forth between LA and Paris just because they're the only cities that naturally have the required infrastructure, unless there's a change.

[speeder]

Not if they keep changing stuff.

The stadium in question was the one for bicycle racing, it was built for the Pan-American games.

Right after those games, IOC decided to change the percentage of seats allowed behind pillars.

So they concluded the solution, instead of reducing amount of seats or something, was to demolish the entire stadium, and build a new one with the support pillars in new locations.

[toyg]

You are not looking at this from the right perspective. Nobody really cares about pillars and views, but a lot of people do care about construction money. Reasons will be found.