The low-tech, cut-price opening ceremony, a moment of levity for a nation beset by economic and political woes, 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.
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Brazil acknowledged its history of slavery in Friday’s opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. “In this Olympic world we welcome you as an enrichment to our Unity in Diversity”.
The U.S. has assigned more than 1,000 spies to protect the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
“Our admiration for you is even greater because you managed this at a very hard time in Brazilian history”.
When you compare it to the 22.4 million who tuned into the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, then the numbers aren’t that good.
“You can always trust the Brazilians to put on a great party, that’s what we did – joined a flamboyant party today”, Hong Kong chef de mission Kenneth Fok Kai-kong said. “Here is our Olympic answer”. “This marvelous city is the ideal city”. Let us know in the comments, below… Brazil welcomes the world with open arms. “Rio is ready to make history”.
With 554 athletes, the United States has the largest Olympic team, but 100m runner Etimoni Timuani is the only athlete from the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu. An officer from an unidentified agency who was assisting with Olympic security responded and shot the man, according to a statement. He eventually finished third.
The cannonball-shaped cauldron was lit by Brazilian marathoner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima.
Reports earlier Friday suggested that football legend Pele was too fragile to take part.
Since archery was reintroduced into the Olympic Games in 1972, South Korea has won more than half of the available gold medals.
The ceremony also had an important message to deliver to the world.
The Olympic Games only come around once every four years, so they do get everyone excited.
Each athlete was presented with a seed and a cartridge of soil to enable them to plant a native tree of Brazil, which will ultimately form an “Athletes Forest” made up of 207 different species-one for each delegation.
Supermodel Gisele Bundchen made her final appearance on the catwalk, striding out to the tune of Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipanema”.
“I am the proudest man alive”, said Nuzman, even as he reminded everyone that he was an Olympian who had played volleyball at the 1964 Olympics. “I believe that the unity is the key to creating a world filled with kindness, gratitude, peace, and love”.
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The show is the work of 35,000 professionals and roughly 12,000 volunteers. The Russian embassy, though, said no Russian official was involved.
