{"id":520898,"date":"2026-04-09T06:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T06:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/520898\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T06:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T06:02:11","slug":"rio-de-janeiro-fire-damages-roof-of-velodrome-in-olympic-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/520898\/","title":{"rendered":"Rio de Janeiro: Fire damages roof of velodrome in Olympic Park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A large fire damaged the roof of the velodrome in Rio de Janeiro&#8217;s Olympic Park, but the venue&#8217;s track was not affected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">About 80 firefighters and 20 fire engines battled the blaze after being called at 04:17 local time on Wednesday, the state&#8217;s military fire department said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The venue, where Great Britain won six Olympic and eight Paralympic gold medals in 2016, houses the Olympic Museum which features exhibits \u200band artefacts from the Games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere said a preliminary assessment had found &#8220;the track at the Olympic Velodrome was not damaged in any way&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It remains intact and well-preserved. Obviously, it will need to be cleaned and undergo some form of maintenance before we can announce that the velodrome is back in operation,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lt Col Fabio Contreiras told CNN Brazil firefighters tackled the blaze inside and outside of the velodrome, and worked to protect artefacts in the museum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">No injuries were reported and officials said there was no risk of the blaze spreading to other parts of the Olympic complex.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The velodrome roof previously caught fire twice in 2017, with both incidents linked to falling sky lanterns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A large fire damaged the roof of the velodrome in Rio de Janeiro&#8217;s Olympic Park, but the venue&#8217;s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-520898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}