“I think that he was not fully rested at the Olympic trials, I think that this is his swan song if you may and he’s going to make every single stroke count”.
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Rio 2016 officially gets under way on Friday as the imposing Maracana hosts the start of the Games.
Team Burundi arrives during the opening ceremony for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 5, 2016.
A former Brazilian marathon runner, Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, lit the cauldron to mark the beginning of the Games, after the football legend, Pele, pulled out due to poor health.
The artistic segment of the ceremony, directed by Fernando Meirelles, who is best known for his 2002 film “City of God”, was a brief run through of the history of Brazil.
Since the event won’t able to avoid the issues that are gripping Brazil – a president facing impeachment, a deep recession and environmental threats – organizers made sure that global warming and the environment, especially the country’s magnificent Amazon rainforest, are important parts of the Olympic opening ceremony. “I’m the proudest man alive”. At his fifth and last Olympics, it was the first time the record holder of 22 medals had marched in an opening ceremony, having skipped previous ones to save energy for competition.
This team made history by becoming the first group of refugees to be recognized at the Olympic Games. The team, comprised of 10 athletes, includes five from South Sudan, two from Syria, two from the Democratic Republic of Congo and one from Ethiopia.
It may have taken NBC five hours (no, really) to get to it, but Rio’s display for the Olympic flame almost made that wait worthwhile.
With all that – and still more, way more – you say what Bach said at a news conference here Thursday, “There were huge challenges”. The 31-year-old star led the American team with style at the Maracanã Stadium on August 5.
The most decorated Olympian of all time returns to the Games after a short-lived retirement, during which the legendary swimmer struggled with both substance abuse and depression, eventually entering rehab and returning to competitive swimming.
History will also be made as US team member Ibtihaj Muhammad becomes the first American to compete in the Olympics wearing a hijab.
The honor of declaring the games open will fall to Michel Temer, Brazil’s unpopular interim president, standing in for suspended President Dilma Rousseff. Either way, congratulations to Gisele on a long and incredibly successful career!
In what organisers have called a low-tech ceremony constrained by the dire economy, Brazil will showcase its natural treasures and the cultural riches created by one of the world’s most diverse nations. Lea has blazed her own path in the fashion industry, working with everyone from Givenchy to Redken. Brazil was also the last country in the Americas to outlaw slavery – they waited until 1888.
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From supermodel Gisele Bundchen’s tribute to the “Girl from Ipanema” to the promise of an athletes’ forest to be planted after the Games, Brazil’s big night saluted the country’s past and pointed towards a greener future.
