The foundation stone for the Village was laid in December 2010 but this was the first time that the IOC Coordination Commission had officially seen it, even though this is their third full visit.

They saw it from an observatory tower, where they had a view of the entire Village site and El Moutawakel pressed the bottom which activated the mechanism to plunge the first stake into the land lot.

Also present the ceremony were the Carloz Nuzman, the President of Rio 2016, and Eduardo Paes, the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro.

After its construction in the Barra zone, which will host more than 50 per cent of the competitions, the Olympic Village will be located within 25 minutes of the competition and training venues for 73 per cent of athletes in the Olympic Games, and 10 minutes from 68 per cent of the athletes in the Paralympic Games.

The Olympic Village is being built by a private consortium, which will sell the apartments for use after the Games.

Paes has promised that there will be no more public money spent on the project.

A 62-hectare area will host 31 buildings with 13 apartments and 17 floors each, in addition to 5,604 apartments with two, three and four bedrooms, totaling 17,952 beds.


Next, the Commission, including El Moutawakel, joined Nuzman and Paes (all pictured above) 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 officially comes on stream tomorrow, the final day of the Coordination Commission's visit to the Brazilian city. 

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 than 464 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.

"While it has done much work since June 2011, when we made our last visit, Rio needs to achieve other important goals in the coming months," said El Moutawakel. 

"This meeting is an important step in our joint journey for 2016."

Nuzman claimed that Rio 2016 was already leading to important infrastructure changes in the city.

"Since the Commission's last visit we made progress in several areas," he said.

"Today, Rio citizens are already taking advantage of the impressive transformation taking place in the city, as envisioned by Rio 2016." 

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