They'll gather from around the world in Rio de Janeiro this August to run, swim, sail, lift and lob, and hold their noses from the literal and figurative stink surrounding the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Several Olympic events will take place in waters filled with raw sewage. What a sad statement on a gathering of international congeniality and peaceful competition. Even for the Olympics, infamous for corruption, rigged results and a win-at-all-costs mentality, the events in Rio de Janeiro offer an unusually rich display of how far the games have descended into the gutter.

The host country, Brazil, is immersed in a brutal political scandal that led to President Dilma Rousseff's ouster last month. She was accused of fudging budget figures to make Brazil's economic performance appear much better than it was — all so she could win re-election in 2014.

Recently leaked tapes, however, indicate that Rousseff's right-wing opponents launched impeachment proceedings to protect themselves from a much more explosive scandal involving bribes and embezzlement linked to the state oil company, Petrobras.

The economy is tanking. As millions languish in abject poverty in slum neighborhoods surrounding Rio, the country is spending billions of dollars for stadiums and other Olympic facilities.

Brazil's problems controlling the Zika virus are so severe, 125 health experts last week called for the Olympics to be postponed or moved.

Then there's the infamous Rio sewage system, which dumps up to 80 percent of the effluent from the metropolitan area's 12 million residents straight into the Atlantic Ocean off Rio's coast. Ocean currents carry the effluent right back to a Rio bay where major Olympic events, such as long-distance swimming, sailing and rowing, will be held.

Brazil pledged in its winning bid for the games that the problem would be fixed and coastal waters would be clean. They lied. Now athletes must go to extraordinary lengths to protect themselves from bacteria and disease-causing pathogens estimated to be 1.7 million times the level considered hazardous on a California beach.

The stink doesn't stop there. Russia now risks having its entire team banned because such a high percentage of its athletes have tested positive for doping. Blood and urine samples from hundreds of athletes are being tested to determine if they cheated during the 2008 and 2012 games, and nearly half of the 31 athletes under direct suspicion are from Russia.

Controversy always swells in the lead-up to the Olympics, as construction falls behind schedule and international politics taints the spirit of togetherness that's supposed to dominate these events. Perhaps not since the 1980 Summer games in Russia, boycotted by the United States and 64 other countries over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, has the atmosphere been this rank leading up to the opening ceremony. Let the Cesspool Games begin.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH