Blame it on Rio was an eighties comedy romp starring Michael Caine. Sadly there is very little to laugh about in a headline that keeps surfacing in relation to the Rio Olympic games next year in 2016.
The International Golf Federation Vice President Ty Votaw choice a great time to give an update on the Gil Hanse-Amy Alcott designed course for Rio 2016, as a last comment at a press conference at the British Open.
It was then that he revealed that the course will not be ready in time for a test event until “the first quarter of 2016.”
The course was to be tested by an international field of golfers in November of this year.
Votaw revealed that a decision was made that the oft-delayed, legally challenged golf course needed another full grow-in season in order to be competition ready.
So not a ball will be hit on the 72 hole course to be used by men and women until a few months before the Games are due to start. Not the perfect reintroduction that golf was hoping for having been absent from the OIympic Games since way back in 1904 in St Louis USA.
In 1900 Charles Sands won gold in Paris and two British athletes took silver and bronze. In 1904 it was a Canadian who won gold, George Lyon, with the USA taking silver and bronze. It has been a long wait to see who will claim the first gold since Lyon, so a few months more waiting for the course to be completed and ready should not be too big a hiccup.
