Shoals of samba dancers flowed in a rainbow of colours, but many showed less flesh than normal for Brazil, seemingly mindful of their global TV audience.
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“The Olympic dream is now a wonderful reality”.
Friday’s ceremony lifts the curtain on a more than two-week sporting festival featuring superstars like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, as well as thousands more who will compete for 2,102 medals until August 21. All in all I think the Brazilians put on a fine show, with no indication that they were operating on a very tight budget, aside from all the signs that said LONDON 2012.
The 78,000 spectators, and an estimated three billion television viewers, were treated to a four-hour spectacle that lived up to director Fernando Meirelles’s promise of an intimate and colourful party.
That is a 20 per cent increase on advertising revenue from the London Olympics, with bosses putting that down to negative stories surrounding the event which have generated interest. Even the nipple-sticker woman was not really getting a lot of stares, which you would understand if you saw what Brazilian women wear to the beach (more on this in a future column). The cauldron was among the smallest in Olympic history and had a modest flame, not the usual raging bonfire, meant to signify the conservation of fossil fuels.
None of this likely mattered to the competitors from 207 nations that paraded into the stadium with giddy smiles on their faces. Instead of entering the stadium and circling around its edges, closer to the crowd, athletes walked down the middle through a corridor of performers donning colorful outfits – which made it hard to see them. Each flag bearer was accompanied by a child carrying a potted plant, and the delegation was followed by a percussion group.
Pele’s last-minute replacement was former marathoner Vanderlei Cordeiro, best remembered as the bronze medalist of the 2004 Athens Olympics who was leading before a fan attacked him.
Rio made a decision to take it back – way back to when microbial life started.
Those who were unable to march gathered in the team lounge at the Olympic Village to watch the opening ceremony which was a dazzling display of light, colour and an infectious Samba beat.
But the overriding theme was concern for the environment, an admonition that we must heed science’s warnings and stop living and consuming as we have in the past.
Organisers announced earlier this week they were cutting a scene in the production where Gisele was originally scripted to be robbed by a local child representing the slums of Rio. Instead of the stated goal of 80 percent of the bay’s sewage being treated, barely half was.
Maybe they haven’t figured out busing and transport yet, maybe they’ve done the Main Press Centre and International Broadcast Centre on the cheap, but there seemed little affordable or cheap about this first worldwide TV show – even if the parade of athletes lasted nearly two hours, which might be the first Olympic record of these Games.
With a limited budget, the outcome of a biting recession that roiled preparations for South America’s first Olympics, Brazil laced its high-energy opening party for the games of the 31st Olympiad with a sobering message of the dangers of global warming.
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After the athletes’ march past, the formal ceremony began with Bach and Rio Organising Committee chief Carlos Arthur Nuzman giving their speeches. Proud of my city. Always believe in your dreams. During a segment about the big buildings that rose up in Brazil-which, like many such segments, seemed to imply that we were all better off before everything got all modern – he showed people climbing up the buildings and then pushing around some props, but only a few people. Our dream is this Olympic city transformed by the Games, hosting the world and celebrating humanity … “Rio is ready to make history”.
