Rio carnival's Olympic theme lacks funding

With Brazil currently in economic recession, Rio Olympics is sparing no effort to keep budget balance, while at the on-going Rio de Janeiro carnival, a samba school displaying Olympic theme is also suffering from lack of funding.

Brazil's world-famous carnival parades have started in Rio, with huge floats and lush costumes designed for the big competition in the city's Sambadrome. As it is the year of the first Latin American Olympics, the Rio Olympics are favourite themes of the samba schools.

The Uniao da Ilha samba school, which has chosen an Olympics theme for its dancers and floats, says its financial situation got worse in recession time.

The samba school presented the theme "Olympic in nature. Everyone is meeting in Rio" in Sunday's evening, the first day of the special group carnival competition. Their procession included dancers clad in ancient Greek-style costumes, a large depiction of the famous Christ the Redeemer statue and athletes from cyclists to acrobatic wheelchair competitors.

However behind the scenes, the Uniao da Ilha samba school encounters numerous difficulties in sponsorship. Marcio Andre Mehry de Souza, the administrative chief for the samba school, said because of the devaluation of Brazilian currency real, the imported materials for the costumes, 90 percent of which come from China, are wildly expensive.

"We spend 15 million reais (3.8 million U.S. dollars) for each parade and only half of that has financing. With the recession it has got even worse," he said, complaining that neither the mayor's office nor the Olympic organizing committee contributed anything, despite the samba school promoting the Games.

"We began working in June on the understanding that we'd get financing, but it never arrived." Endit