Passing the 2016 Olympic Torch: Rio de Janeiro

The host city of the 2016 Olympic Games will be announced on Friday, Oct. 2. In an effort to prepare you for the big day in Copenhagen, we'll take a look at each city this week, leading up to Friday's announcement. The supporters of Rio de Janeiro's Olympics bid have made their strongest appeals by noting the IOC's own shortcomings, namely that they yet to stage an Olympiad in South America. Reports circulated that Rio's bid team made a splash earlier this year with a presentation to the selection committee that included a giant world map with dots showing where previous Olympics had been located, with a conspicuous void in the continent of South America. Should Rio obtain the bid, Africa would become the sole (inhabited) continent without an Olympiad. Taken together with the fact that Brazil will play host to the 2014 World Cup, and a country that was unable to crack the finalists for the 2004 and 2012 games finds itself a surprisingly viable candidate. ...