RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The world’s best known Olympic historian says it will take something more destructive than the Zika virus to cancel the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
David Wallechinsky tells The Associated Press that “the only time the Games have been cancelled is in war — World War I and World War II. Other than that, nothing has done it.”
Wallechinsky says “it’s pretty late to move the Games, so I’m sure they’ll go forward” and open Aug. 5.
Brazil is the epicenter of the rapidly spreading mosquito-borne Zika epidemic, which is also generating rumors that South America’s first Games may be called off.