On its second day in the city, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission for the Rio 2016™ Games was updated this Tuesday, 5 June, on the progress of the venues and infrastructure works, as part of Rio de Janeiro’s preparation for the event.

The commission visited the Olympic Village construction site, where the foundation stone was launched in December 2010. From an observatory tower with a view of the entire Village site, the President of the Coordination Commission, Moroccan Olympic champion Nawal El Moutawakel pressed the bottom which activated the mechanism to plunge the first stake into the land lot. Also present the ceremony were the President of the Rio 2016™ Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Carlos Arthu Nuzman, the Mayor Eduardo Paes, and the IOC Executive Director for the Olympic Games, Gilbert Felli.

After its construction in the Barra zone, which will host more than 50% of the competitions, the Olympic Village will be located within 25 minutes of the competition and training venues for 73% of athletes in the Olympic Games, and 10 minutes from 68% of the athletes in the Paralympic Games. The Olympic Village will be built by a private consortium, which will sell the apartments for use after 2016.

The commission members visited the new village project, which meets the requirements of both the real estate market and Olympic and Paralympic athletes. A 62-hectare area will host 31 buildings with 13 apartments and 17 floors each, in addition to 3,604 apartments with two, three and four bedrooms, totaling 17,952 beds.

Next, the commission took the inaugural ride in the Transoeste BRT line (Bus Rapid Transit, high-speed articulated buses), which was part of Rio’s candidature project, and comes on stream this Wednesday, 6 June. The new line is 56-kilometre long and will connect Barra to the neighborhoods of Santa Cruz and Campo Grande, in the city’s far western area, benefiting 220,000 people per day with a one-hour reduction in travel time.

Finally, the IOC members visited the construction site of the Metro Line 4 in São Conrado. The tunnel’s excavation works began last August, with more than464 metres of tunnels towards Barra and Gávea. Line 4 will be 16 kilometres long and will connect Barra to the South Zone in around 35 minutes, and will serve 300,000 people.

The visit of the Coordination Commission ends this Wednesday with the presentation of the conclusions and the next steps relative to the aspects of the preparation for the Games discussed since Monday.

The Olympic Games Coordination Commission

In every Olympic Games edition, the IOC creates a Coordination Commission which carries out periodic visits to the host-city for the purpose of supporting the work of the Organising Committee and monitoring the project’s development. The group assigned to Rio 2016™ Games was created in January 2010.

The Coordination Commission includes members from the five continents, all with previous experience in Olympic Games Evaluation, Coordination Commissions or Organising Committees of the world’s largest sport event. The group represents several units of the Olympic Movement, such as athletes, National Olympic Committees and International Federations, for the coordination required to guarantee a successful event.