Rio Olympic cost cuts to continue

Cost-cutting at the Rio Olympics is destined to continue, Australia’s chef de mission warns.

Organisers have detailed some moves to slice up to 20 per cent from the $A7.3 billion budget for the Games, which start in 200 days.

Australia’s chef de mission Kitty Chiller says there will be more cuts but senior officials are trying as best they can to shield athletes from the repercussions.

“They are going through cost cutting measures and I think that will continue,” Chiller told AAP on Monday.

“And all of those measures have an effect on their side, so we then need to make sure that it doesn’t effect performance at the end of the day.”

Brazil is grappling with its worst recession in decades, double-digit inflation, rising unemployment and the threatened impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff over alleged dodgy public accounts.

Olympic organisers have announced a slew of cuts, including that televisions won’t be installed in athlete’s rooms, but backflipped on plans to make athletes pay for airconditioning in their units.

“In the last month Rio has made some decisions and announcements that really affect us,” Chiller said.

“There was the whole airconditioning thing at the end of last year, just recently it was announced there won’t be televisions in the lounge room … there won’t be furniture on the balconies.”

The athletes’ twin-share rooms were “not luxury”, she said.

“So we need to make sure … the village is a performance environment,” Chiller said.

“And it has to be. It’s not a playground, it’s not a social point, it’s a competition venue.”

Australia has organised an off-site venue, dubbed The Edge, for its competitors and families and friends about one kilometre away which offers an escape from the village itself.

“It’s close and there’s a suite of services but it’s still a performance environment – it’s an extension of the village but it’s our little Australian site that we can control,” she said.

Chiller said preparations in Rio to deliver South America’s first Olympics would go down to the wire.

“The last couple of weeks they have fired the contractors for the tennis centre, haven’t paid their (utility) bill at the track and field centre; just two days ago they pushed back the cycling test event,” she said.

“What can you do? At the end of the day there is going to be a velodrome, there’s going to be a pool … it will be there. Absolutely no point for us to worry about that.

“It will be what it will be and it will be the same for everybody.

“And I said to our team leaders right from the start that yes, it will be a challenging Games in many ways but we have to accept those challenges and cope with them better than anyone else.”