The Rio Olympics have well and truly begun after a delightful opening ceremony that took viewers on a journey through Brazil’s history and celebrated global unity across four hours.
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And the roar the crowd gave the likes of Spain’s Rafael Nadal and the United States team, led by Michael Phelps, would support the view that has been growing that Rio is ready to forget its concerns about the broken political system, struggling economy and alarming Zika virus to enjoy its moment as the centre of the world’s attention.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach said the city of Rio de Janeiro will benefit from the Games. Athletes of the USA during the opening ceremony. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY.
Those staying up in South Africa did not have to wait long to see Wayde van Niekerk leading out their Olympic team.
Athletes of Benin take part in the opening ceremony on August 5, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
RIO DE JANEIRO The whipping gusts that disrupted athletes and spectators alike were just a prelude to the winds of change that roared through Rio de Janeiro on Sunday night: Serena and Venus Williams lost an Olympic doubles match for the first time.
The opening ceremony was decidely simple and low-tech, a reflection of Brazil’s tough economic times.
For the first time, the athletes were handed tree seeds, which are meant to be sown in the Athletes’ Forest in the area of Deodoro, planned as Rio 2016’s enduring legacy.
Early on, the host country told its story through a combination of dance and display, tracing the country’s history from its indigenous peoples to Portuguese colonization, slavery and the massive skyscrapers that jut out from its major cities sometimes not far from the favelas where its impoverished live. The clash of cultures, as the ceremony showed, is what makes Brazil the complex mosaic that it is.
The show drew homegrown stars, like supermodel Gisele Bundchen, who walked across the stadium to the sound of bossa nova hit “Girl from Ipanema” and Paulinho da Viola, a samba songwriter who sang the national anthem with a string orchestra. Everyone performed for free.
Loud cheers erupted when Brazil’s beloved pioneer of aviation Alberto Santos-Dumont was depicted taking off from the stadium and flying over modern-day Rio.
The honor of declaring the games open will fall to Michel Temer, Brazil’s unpopular interim president, standing in for suspended President Dilma Rousseff.
The ceremony’s creative director Fernando Meirelles had less money to spend than his predecessors, including the mastermind of London 2012’s memorable show Danny Boyle, but he promised “the coolest party” and he certainly gave it a go.
It started with the beginning of life itself in Brazil, and the population that formed in the vast forests and built their communal huts, the ocas.
“They’re talking about slavery?”
“The refugee athletes are sending a hope to the millions of refugees”, he said.
Participating athletes were handed a seed of the country’s native trees after they paraded into the stadium.
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The opening ceremony, a cut-price but welcome moment of levity for a nation beset by economic and political troubles, featured performers as slaves, laboring with backs bent, gravity-defying climbers hanging from the ledges of buildings in Brazil’s teeming megacities and – of course – dancers, all hips and wobble, grooving to thumping funk and sultry samba.
