How Do You Fly 300 Olympic Horses to Rio? Business Class, of Course
German pentathlete Lena Schoeneborn and her horse Cashew during a media day in Berlin for the 2016 Olympic Games.
Photographer: Britta Pedersen/picture-alliance/dpa via AP PhotoSome Olympic athletes seem to be super-human, while others aren’t human at all. In Rio de Janeiro this week, more than 300 horses are arriving to compete in games that have provided a globe-spanning challenge for the world’s logistics and freight industries.
The 2016 games will involve roughly 30 million items, everything from condoms to firearms, with most marshaled from around the world and sent to Brazil on 6,000 cargo containers arriving by sea, air, and ground. About 70 percent of the imports came via container ship and 25 percent by air, with the rest traveling on trucks, said Fernando Cotrim, logistics director for the Rio games. From China, for example, came the 40,000 beds and 40,000 mattresses for an Olympics Village that has already drawn complaints from Australian competitors about the plumbing, and the smell.