Asked if Rio would seek the 2020 Games in the event of losing out on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) members’ vote, he responded: "I’m not regarding the idea that we will be defeated.

"This is the first time we are running, and we don’t want to be the father of the child, we want to be the child itself.

President Lula added that his final pitch to IOC members tomorrow would emphasise that Brazil was at "a magical moment" in terms of economic growth, and ready as never before to host an Olympics.

"No other place in the world has the certainty in its future that Brazil has," he said.

"The self esteem of people is at its highest threshold following a magical moment of great possibility of financial growth, a possibility of improving the lives of the poorest people.

"In the past when Brazil has wanted to bid for big events people have said, ‘We can’t do it, we are a poor country, we are considered second class citizens.’

"Now we want to show the world ‘Yes, we can do it.

"We can organise the Games.

"We see the Olympics have only been held in highly developed countries, with the exception of Beijing last year and Mexico in 1968.

"Many of the Olympic Games have been in Europe, or the United States.

"Brazil is the only country in the largest 10 world economies not to have had the Games.

"Even in this global crisis Brazil is in a much better financial situation than the so-called rich countries.

"The crisis hit us last, and we were the first to get out of it."

President Lula added that the arguments for Rio hosting the 2016 Games were the same as those he had used to win political elections in his country.

"A lot of people said I was not educated enough to be President, that I was working class, and I came from a trade union background.

"We went to the streets to convince the Brazilian people of our case.

"Here in this case history repeats itself.

"For some countries the Olympics are just one more thing they have got to organise.

"For us it's going to be something for people that have a real passion about sport.

"We have 180million youngsters in South America, and it will be a unique opportunity to bring the Games to them.

"They would not be able to travel to Tokyo, or Chicago, or Madrid. If you are poor it is even more difficult to get to these countries."

The President added that the recent discovery of deep sea oil fields and a widening of the country’s traditional markets of North America and Europe to include Asia and the Middle East had enabled Brazil to recover more swiftly from the global economic downturn than what he termed the traditional "developed" nations.

"In the last month in Brazil we created 240,000 new jobs, and we have reached one million new jobs this year despite there being millions of unemployed in the developed world," he said.

Contact this writer at [email protected].


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