WITH only one week to go until the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, Team Scotland’s officials still weren’t entirely sure that we were even going to travel to India, such were the horror stories that had come out of the host country: the athletes’ village wouldn’t be ready, the venues would not be finished and everyone was going to get sick, we heard. There had even been talk that the Delhi Games would be moved to Australia, in such disarray were the organisers. But the Games did go ahead in India and they were more or less hiccup-free, even if they were, in the words of Usain Bolt, “a bit s***”.

In reality, the pre-Games scare stories were nothing new; indeed, it is now something of a tradition that every major sporting event, particularly an Olympic Games, shall be preceded with rumours of impending disaster: the Athens Olympics in 2004 was swamped with stories that it would not be ready; in 2008, Beijing had to deal with human rights concerns and high levels of air pollution; and London 2012 was besieged with negative press about security and transport problems. All of these Olympic Games’ proceeded with barely a hitch, particularly London, which was so problem-free it was scarcely believable.

Rio, however, is taking negative press to a whole new level. This weekend will mark the "two-months-to-go" milestone and the scare stories just keep coming. The Zika virus outbreak is, of course, the most pressing challenge facing Brazil, with the severity of the problem so great that a group of 150 prominent scientists, doctors and medical ethicists have signed a letter calling for this summer's Olympics to be postponed or moved from Rio.

With just 63 days until the Opening Ceremony of the Games, it is almost certain that this will not happen but nevertheless, it is a far from ideal situation. But Zika is not the only problem that Brazil is facing as it prepares to welcome the Olympic Games to South American soil for the first time. Political unrest is shockingly high: the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached last month after being accused of breaking financial laws. Also this year, Brazil’s chief of security for the Olympic Games and the country’s sports minister both resigned. Brazil is in a deep recession, the worst that the country has seen since the 1930s. And levels of violence there are as bad as they have ever been; violent crime is an everyday occurrence, with firefights recently taking place near the athletes’ village and Games venues.

Earlier this year, three members of the Spanish Olympic sailing team were robbed at gunpoint by five youths in Santa Teresa, one of Rio's most tourist-friendly areas. So serious is the crime threat that former Brazilian football star Rivaldo felt compelled to tweet this message: “I urge all of you who are planning on visiting Brazil… to stay in your countries. You are putting your life at risk here". Having one of your country’s great sports stars warning people not to visit is probably not quite what the Rio Tourist Board wanted to hear.

And there are more problems: several venues are still not ready, most notably the velodrome and the tennis arena. Pollution in the water where the sailing and open-water swimming will take place is dangerously high – so much so that experts have said that it is “very likely” that athletes will fall ill. And there are severe doubts about the quality of Brazil’s new infrastructure – two people died in April when a newly-built bike path that they were cycling along collapsed.

For the athletes, the next two months are hugely important and the constant negativity surrounding the Games in Rio will not exactly be music to their ears. But in reality, the vast majority of athletes will be blocking out the white noise that is the scare stories – you don’t train for a decade or more to qualify for an Olympic Games only to be scared off by hearsay. If someone had told me that the athletes’ village at London 2012 was infested with bubonic rats, I would have said thanks for the info as I simultaneously donned my Team GB tracksuit and skipped happily on in. This is the Olympics and it will take more bad press than Rio has generated to persuade most athletes to miss it.

But the challenges Rio is facing does highlight a wider issue: are countries being awarded the Olympic Games even when they are clearly ill-equipped to host it? This is a no-win situation for the International Olympic Committee – to award the Games to a select few “first-world” countries defeats the purpose of the Olympics, which is to spread the power of sport around the globe. But to award the Games to countries who are not able to safely host it does significantly damage the Olympic brand. And worryingly, in Rio, significant harm could come to athletes and spectators too.