Rio 2016: Olympics lacks people, sanity and champagne reception for Supernova

Usain Bolt being Usain Bolt, no one was expecting him to announce his presence in Rio de Janeiro with anything other than a specially convened press conference featuring 15 samba dancing women, with barely three sequins to share between them. This is Brazil. This is how they do things. Their president might have been impeached. Their mosquitoes might shrink the heads of unborn babies. So what? They're sexy and they know it.

In retrospect, it was arguably foreseeable that in a country in the grip of a deep economic crisis, in a city whose population still, to a large extent, live in shanty towns, and where The Rolling Stones performed the only free concert in their history, there might not be that many people willing to shell out the equivalent of 50 quid to watch horses dance.

In London four years ago, empty seats were a brief crisis. At the equestrian centre, in a lonely bit of Rio even its own residents might not know exists, the shock would have been if anyone had turned up. And they didn't.

The BBC, to its credit, tried its best. “Supernova is such a quirky horse,” its presenter cheerfully opined, as BBC Four suddenly realised it had nine minutes to fill before the hockey got going. “He hiccups when he gets nervous. He sleeps with a mouthful of hay, like a pacifier.” Right.

Behind her the banks of empty green seats stretched far up into the jungle-covered mountainside. Even Cristo Redentor had turned the other way.

“Hold your breath. Cross your fingers,” warned the commentator.

It is not yet two days since Bolt's samba army gyrated with such force there was grave risk of their drilling all the way to Australia. The clip has been shared more than a million times on various forms of social media. In their wake came Supernova, gamely klip-klopping over the soft sand like a moonwalking geography teacher at a Year Nine disco, joyously unaware that the idea is to go backward while it looks like you're going forward. The syncopated hoof dance gathered pace. For some reason, there was no music.

The world went mad some time ago. Sport remains as reliable a barometer for that as ever. That an English football club should pay £89m for a player to rejoin them, four years after selling him for less than £1m, and then announce their wondrous news in the dead of night to capitalise on interest in their Asian and American markets has been taken in some quarters as a sure sign that we are nearing humanity's end times.

In a country that has constantly protested that The Greatest Show On Earth is something it simply cannot afford, a specially constructed arena into which English thoroughbreds are flown in on their own specially adapted private jets, to do a mad fox trot in front of an audience of precisely no one almost feels like it is actively being done to take the mick.

Supernova did alright in the end. “He's such a sensitive horse,” we were told. “And Spencer Wilton rides him in such a sensitive way.” Is Supernova sensitive enough to realise he's being made a fool of? Who knows? Well, Supernova probably does. Why else would a fully grown horse still need a dummy?