The place is depressed, and many may be thinking it has to host a massive party for what?
But before you decide to press the 'off button' from August 5-21, there are some major factors to take into consideration.
It must be remembered that it has become tradition to sound alarm bells in the months leading up to an Olympic Games.
For example just two years ago cries of crisis came often before the Winter Games in Sochi - what with anti-gay legislation and hate crimes, venues built on protected lands and illegal dumping and contaminated water.
Add in Beijing's successful Olympic bids - summer and winter - with both raising the question about just how important a country's human rights record really is to the International Olympic Committee.
And when you stop and think about it is there an example of a truly honest and noble Olympics out there?
It will be very difficult to find because politics take a toll - the Olympics are never free and clear of their political moment.
The 1936 Berlin Games of course stands out because of well, Hitler, who used the sporting occasion as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy.
In 1980, more than 60 national delegations, including the United States, stayed away from the Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
An act which the Soviets and 14 of their closest friends returned four years later at the Los Angeles Games.
But boycotts aren't the only kinds of Olympic crisis.
"The Games must go on," were the words definitively declared by International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage after terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes during the Munich 1972 Games.
Safety concerns are nothing new to the Olympics.
Atlanta 1996 saw a bombing in Centennial Olympic Park that killed one, another person later died of a heart attack, and injured more than a hundred others.
And back in England terrorist threats from all directions littered the papers ahead of London 2012 and were blamed for keeping spectators away.
However my lasting image from the previous Summer Olympics is not of doom and gloom, it was screaming at the television as Great Britain's Jessica Ennis clinched heptathlon gold.
And a week or so later as I waved around a Union Jack flag in the Sheffield city centre surrounded by 20,000 people to welcome Jess back it was clear for all to see she had inspired her city and a nation through sport.
Rio has the potential to help inspire each nation with the sport on display. It can also help nations unite throughout the world and show different countries the human side of nations of which they are unfamiliar.
Right here in Rotorua there are already early signs of inspiration, as seen in the example of Earlybirds Educare and Kawaha Point School hosting their own mini Olympic Games during Rio 2016.
And each New Zealand athlete I have profiled in the build up to the Games has always had the dream to compete from an early age, taking inspiration from their own 'Olympic hero or heroine'.
This is not to say that there aren't legitimate concerns about the Rio Olympics.
However the Games will go on, of course, and for those of us watching on television, it will be a thrilling spectacle.
