A permanent sports facility built to host Slalom Canoeing and BMX competitions at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. The park was constructed in an area lacking in recreation options, specifically for the regions high concentration of youth. After the event, BMX facilities were intended to be maintained as public leisure areas for the population. The slalom course was planned to be transformed into a community pool. Plans state, “covering an area of 500,000m², the park will be the city’s second largest. Sport facilities will be put to combined use, which will be used by high performance athletes and the population, and for leisure related purposes” ⁽⁵²⁾.  Radical Park was planned to be the primary legacy of the Deodoro venues cluster, however it had to close for a period after the games. The grounds are currently open, but heavily guarded and nearly impossible to enter due to inconsistent hours and poor upkeep.

Radical Park is especially controversial because it was to house one of the environmental legacies of Rio 2016 – the athlete’s forest. At the opening ceremonies, commentators explained Rios green games, “Replanting forests is the fastest, most efficient and cheapest way to reverse global warming.  We invite everyone to join in:  where there is room for a tree, plant a seed.” This challenge was taken literally as the parade of nations began, and each competitor entering the stadium carried a native Brazilian tree species planted in a tube filled with soil. One Athlete equals One Tree:  207 delegations, 207 species. As the Brazilian team entered Maracanã Stadium to end the Parade of Nations, rings holding seeds and soil were moved into the Olympic five-ring shape. It was green instead of the traditional colors of the games, signifying the goal to transplant depleted forests ⁽⁸⁾. 11,000 seeds were carried into the stadium that day, many of whose fates became a parable mirroring so many other promises made in relation to the Olympic legacy. Olympic organizers called the procession “Seeds of Hope,” explaining the containers would be planted as part of an Athlete’s Forest in the Deodoro neighborhood of Rio. However, it seems this project ended after the planting of the first 100 seeds. An article in The Rio Times reports (paraphrased), “Rio de Janeiro city and Olympic officials joined with athletes and municipal school students last week to unveil the Athletes’ Forest at Parque Radical in Deodoro. At the ceremony, one hundred seedlings were planted in a six thousand square meter grassy knoll alongside Parque Radical. Participating in the planting was one of the stars of the Rio 2016 Games, Brazilian gymnast, Flávia Saraiva, “It is really nice to see an initiative like this taking place in our country and to realize that Brazil is improving in every way,” exclaimed Flavinha. “It’ll be exciting to come back here and see that my seedling has flourished”. ⁽⁵⁹⁾It was arranged that the following year, in 2017, this site would receive remaining eleven thousand nine hundred seedlings that had been planted by the Olympic athletes. This has not yet taken place. ESPN continues the story, “Since the opening ceremony, the Brazilian environmental engineering firm, Biovert, has been cultivating the remaining seedlings at its facility at a small town in Rio’s countryside. They sit in planting pots under a sheer black canopy on a farm 100 kilometers from Rio. Marcelo de Carvalho Silva, the director of Biovert, the company responsible for the seeds, hadn’t heard from Olympic organizers in months. He had no idea what the plans were for the seeds, but he painstakingly watched over them for free, knowing what it would mean for his company — and the country — if something happened to them”. ⁽⁵⁴⁾