Which country hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics?

Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro - the first Games in South America, awarded in 2009 when the country was booming and staged in 2016 when it was in its worst recession in a century, with the president being impeached during the event and the head of the organising committee later jailed for buying votes to win the bid.

That gap between award and delivery is the structural problem with the Olympics rather than a Brazilian one. Cities bid during good years for an event seven years later, the costs overrun essentially every time - the average is well over 150 per cent - and the venues frequently have no use afterwards. Rio's Olympic park was largely derelict within six months, and Athens 2004 is the standard cautionary tale.

The response has been for fewer cities to bid at all. Several referendums in Europe rejected hosting, the 2024 and 2028 Games were awarded simultaneously to Paris and Los Angeles because there was nobody else left in the running, and the IOC has rewritten its rules to encourage existing venues and shared hosting. Los Angeles 1984, which made a profit by using facilities that already existed, is now studied as the model rather than the exception.