If Rio de Janeiro is awarded the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, will the event be held in August, when it's winter in Rio?

I think the answer to that is yes. One of the reasons they dinged the candidate from the Middle east is that they wanted to delay the Games until the fall, and the IOC wasn't interested in that.

Remember that Rio is (1) on the ocean and (2) about at the Tropic of Capricorn. It's a pretty fair bet that August in Rio is a lot more temperate than February in Chicago.

August. It would be a bit like winter in Florida.

Climate was not a factor in my post. I know Rio is fine in winter.

It just seems weird to have the summer games in winter

Of course, if they were to have the winter games in Argentina or Chile, they would pretty much have to be in the winter, which is one of the reasons they moved the Winter Olympics to the intermediate even numbered year.

Technically, wasn't it winter in Sydney for the 2000 games?

It sure was winter in Sydney. I wonder what the Australian TV commentators called the games. "Summer" games? Maybe they commented on the summer/winter disparity? After all, it's only summer in half the world at a time.

Actually, the Winter Games are a relatively recent addition, and for the first few editions may not have been fully sanctioned by the IOC. Until then, there were simply "Olympic Games," not "summer" and "winter."

It's easy folks,

The Winter games are played on snow, you know the white stuff that falls in Winter.
The Summer games are played when it ain't snowing.

It's now a sloppy American shorthand to refer to the games held in August as the Summer games. Jim is right, prior to the recent invention of the Winter Olympics the term Summer was not used, it was just 'The Olympics'.

Have you never worried that you have been inviting the people from Chile to the summer games in the middle of their winter?

This confusion has lead to the obvious outcome, a Kenyan man won the Marathon becuase Kenya straddles the Equator and so does not care which way up you figure your seasons.

Maybe if we started to call them the 'Snow Olympics' and the 'Sun Olympics' all would be sorted out. Not only that, but the imagery might make the creation of olympic logos a little simpler.

All I know is, it was good to see track and field events on TV for a change

On a side note, I can't be the only one who prefers javelin, hammer and discus to water polo.