Australian Olympic athletes and support staff are being told that if they are not directly involved in acts of "violent, random and sporadic" crime during the Rio Olympics they should expect to witness it.The bearer of the sobering assessment, former army officer Greg Nance??? who is running security for the 780-strong national team, has been monitoring the local environment in earnest for the past 18 months.Nance has told Fairfax Media he fears Australia's relatively good run with security in Rio will change. Security measures were vastly better tested in London ahead of the 2012 Games than in Brazil, also making him nervous.Rio's Olympic velodrome, for example, did not host a test event, so Nance said it's impossible to be as confident as he was four years ago about security arrangements for the Games' generally.The Australian Olympic Committee has decided in the last fortnight that Nance is to conduct one-on-one briefings with every athlete and support team member - so nearly 800 individuals all up - as each arrives in Rio before the   August 5 opening ceremony.This is a fresh plan. "We weren't planning on me speaking individually to everyone when they arrive.  
It's a major logistical undertaking," Nance said.Fairfax reported this week the AOC has hired private security to be on standby for the team in addition to what the host city is offering. Nance expanded on Friday that two firms have been engaged: "They are reputable international firms, I'm not going to name them," he said.To date, one Australian athlete - paralympian Liesl Tesch - and a team physiotherapist have been robbed at gunpoint in Rio. This followed an event that genuinely heightened the AOC's security concern about six weeks ago - when an Australian team technology expert dining in an Ipanema restaurant witnessed a close-range shooting of a fellow patron."The fact that occurred in an area [Ipanema] that we had been using and intended to use [come Games time] really focused everyone's attention," Nance said. "That experience really highlighted for me that it was just a matter of time. We've had a really good run and because we've got a large team - we are the fourth largest team in the Games ... it is going to happen."Australia's team boss Kitty Chiller has formally pushed for a significant lift in armed presence in Rio as soon as possible.Nance said this is crucial in deterring street violence. Chiller's request, however, has apparently fallen on deaf ears - she has had no response from Rio's mayor Eduardo Paes or even the Games organising committee head Carlos Arthur Nuzman??? - even though it had International Olympic Committee endorsement.Unlike London, the main threat in Rio is not terrorism."They don't have a history of terrorism at all," said Nance, who had the same role for the Australian team in 2012."It's all about street crime and in various forms. "The threats are violent, random and sporadic. You can go to Rio and you can spend months there and nothing can happen to you or you can be there for one day and you get knocked over."They use weapons, knives and guns much more regularly and if you resist in any way they often use those weapons. It's very common and it's the escalating nature of that violence that is my major fear. "A number of Australian athletes have informed the AOC they will leave Rio as soon as they have competed; golfers and equestrian athletes in particular. Some of these plans do not relate to security, rather their next sporting commitments.After spending extended periods on multiple trips to Rio in the last 18 months, Nance returns to the next Olympic host city on   July 22. That's at least three days before Australian athletes arrive, other than the female footballers who are already preparing in Brazil."Because their construction schedule was on time, and delivered on time, the British ran exceptional test events where they exercised everything ... the whole security envelope," he said."In the case of Rio, because of the delay in construction, a lot of venues were behind schedule and their test event schedule has run behind time."The obvious problem with that is that security is one of the first things to suffer because what we call the 'overlay' at venues actually isn't [fully] tested."So the planning and execution of the Games in London was just that much better than what has happened in Brazil."