I am no expert on athletics or the Olympics. Don’t get me wrong, I will go out of my way to watch the odd race over the next few weeks and will pay particular attention to the football as usual.

But overall, I won’t lose any sleep over how many medals Great Britain win or whether they have a successful time in Brazil.

However, it doesn’t feel like the Olympics are two days away. London 2012 had a huge buzz around it. Granted, it was being held a stone’s throw away from my doorstep and you couldn’t go anywhere without a huge sign saying London 2012, but I got the sense that the country was ready and so was the rest of the world.

Most of the build up to Rio has been dominated bythe Russian doping scandal and how athletics are trying to piece together what the European country has been doing for over a decade, which has taken away some of the gloss of the occasion.

But it just seems that Brazil is in no state to host any major sporting event right now.

I would imagine that a country needs to pass a certain amount of requirements after successfully bidding for the Olympics, like having the infrastructure in place to host the Games.

Or having clean water. However, the water is so badly contaminated that experts are saying not to put your head underwater or risk being violently ill.

Team GB will be using bottled water to brush their teeth.

That these problems were only highlighted in the build-up to the Games is worrying. What about the people who live in Brazil and have to drink and use this water on a daily basis? Do they not matter?

I understand that there have been attempts to clean the water but the Brazilian government admitted last year that they would not be able to meet its original target of reducing pollution by 80 per cent.

This was surely a warning sign that the country may not be able to successfully host the Games?

You could argue, given the situation in France ahead of Euro 2016 and the success that tournament was, that Brazil will put on a spectacular show.

Since being awarded the Games, Rio is said to have been reborn and a lot of money has gone into rebuilding the former capital.

Areas have been revitalised — if you can call having access to clean water revitalisation — but without the Olympics, would these areas have been fixed up? Who knows?

The country staged a magnificent World Cup in 2014. But many of the problems which were identified then still exist now. The gulf between the rich and the poor hasn’t changed.

Visitors were told to avoid certain areas in case they were mugged and we have already seen Chinese and Australian athletes being robbed. What message does that send to the fans who are making their way to Rio? Especially as this was highlighted two years ago and not much has been done about it.

Then you have the state of the Olympic village which doesn’t sound like it is complete and is in a right state — team GB will be bringing its own plumber.

Australian Olympic Committee Chef De Mission Kitty Chiller said that upon arrival there were: “blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed and dirty floors in need of a massive clean.”

It isn’t like the Olympics were given to Rio as a surprise last month. They have had years to get everything ready and they haven’t.

It does seem like infrastructure ahead of every major sporting tournament is completed days before it begins but Brazil has really left it to the last minute, Going back to Russia, the fact that some teams are still waiting for a decision on whether they can compete shows a real lack of planning from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the way they have handled this scandal.

They decided to not ban all Russian competitors last week which I don’t agree with but the issue should have been sorted out well before then.

It would be harsh to punish the clean Russian athletes for something they had no control over but this was a state-sponsored programme.

Did they really not know whatwas going on? If they did, why didn’t they come forward instead of turning a blind eye to it?

If they are going to allow Russia to compete, then why not the athlete who came forward to reveal what was going on?

Yulia Stepanova helped expose what was going on and as a thank you she has been invited to attend with her husband.

But what does banning her from competing say to any athlete who wants to come forward in the future?

She applied to compete under a neutral flag. She hasn’t hidden from the fact that she doped in the past but it took a lot of courage for her to speak up and the way she has been treated will probably stop a lot of athletes from helping the IOC in the future.

That Russia will still be able to compete in Brazil says to me that the IOC didn’t want a backlash on them, that they shied away from taking any responsibility and decided to leave it to international sports federations to decide on the entry of individual Russian athletes.

We now have a situation where in less than 48 hours the opening ceremony takes place and athletes are still unsure whether they are allowed to participate.

What kind of joke is that? The handling of the doping scandal has been botched from start to finish.

Brazil is in no state to host the Olympics right now and a decision should have been made to give another country the chance to host the Games and given Rio another chance to host it in the near future.

However, I hope I’m wrong and that in a few weeks time we will look back at Rio 2016 and say what a wonderful occasion it was, what were we so worried about?