These photos of Rio one year after the Olympics are hard to believe

The world looked on with wonder a year ago as a poverty-stricken South American city hosted one of the biggest sporting events in the world.

After months of construction delays and concern over the zika virus, Rio de Janeiro came to life this time last year and hosted the Olympics. But new photos of the city show that the colour, energy and prosperity that the games brought to the city appear to have been drained. While the Olympic Stadium is still in use as a soccer venue, many of the other venues have been left in a semi-derelict state. The site had been earmarked to be developed as the Olympic Training Centre and the Olympic Aquatic Centre was to be dismantled, but work has yet to get off the ground. Pools of standing water sit inside and outside the abandoned Aquatic Centre, making the site a zika risk area, according to Getty. Despite promises of local events at Barra Olympic Park and benefits off the back of the games, including a clean-up of pollution in the bay and cleaning up the city's slums, known as favelas, little has changed for the locals. Brazil continues to face economic and political uncertainty, and critics say the money spent on the games would have been better spent on developing infrastructure in the country. These photos from Metro-Mangueira 'favela' community, which sits around a kilometre away from the Marcana Stadium where the opening ceremony of the Olympics was held, show that life has changed little for the locals since the games. These new photos suggest that Rio may have fallen victim to what Forbes called the 'Olympic curse'. The publication spotted a correlation between hosting the Olympics a slump in the growth of Gross Domestic Product in a number of countries, such as Greece. Studies have also shown that as a costly venture for cities to spend money on, the Olympics offer a poor return on investment.