With the Opening Ceremony in one week, NBC Olympic primetime host Bob Costas went on The Dan Patrick Show on Friday to preview the first Games in South America.
“Everywhere you look, this place is a picture postcard,” Costas said. “Is it blighted, especially in the waters, by sanitation problems? Are there favelas that make what we consider poverty in the United States see opulent? Yes. But there are also soaring structures, beautiful mountainscapes, beautiful waterways, all of that, plus the world’s greatest athletes are bound for Rio. And many of them are going to do miraculous and wonderful things, and we just have our fingers crossed that the array of problems, that everyone’s aware of, don’t intrude upon what we came here primarily to document, which is this great competition.”
Costas was also asked to name his favorite Olympic sport.
“Track events are the most classic events,” he said. “Of course, swimming has moved way up there. It always was one of the premier Olympic events, and now in the [Michael] Phelps era even more so.”
But gymnastics may prove the most enduring sport of the Rio Games.
Costas said it could turn out that “Simone Biles of the United States has delivered the greatest performance of any female gymnast in the history of the Olympics, and Kohei Uchimura of Japan is the greatest male gymnast in the history of the Olympics. Now that’s if it all works out for them.”
MORE: Complete U.S. Olympic team roster
Follow @nzaccardi
