The Real Rio Story Or Protest And Killings: Neil Cleverly Speaks

If you've been on social media you've probably seen Neil Cleverly's account of the "real" Rio he experienced as superintendent of the Olympic Golf Course.

Coupled with Stephen Wade's update on all of the Olympic venues in dilapidated shape, and it's amazing the course ever got built.

Regarding the protests outside the course, Cleverly says...

The protests started as a few and built up. The rumour was that a local politician didn’t like the developer so he was paying people – 100 real a day, which is about £25, to sit outside and throw abuse. That way you get people turning up, the most they could otherwise expect was £250 a month.

The sustainability ones were the most fanatical, they were saying we were killing animals, plants and removing indigenous plants and we weren’t doing any of that. The amount of times we invited them to see what we were doing– they never came in so we knew they were just there to cause trouble, they didn’t give a shit about the environment.