“Our admiration for you is even greater because you managed this at a very hard time in Brazilian history”, Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, told the country during the ceremony at the famed Maracana stadium.
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The flagbearer for the USA has led the contingent of red, white and blue-clad American athletes into Maracana Stadium, after being picked for that distinction earlier this week.
The two Brazilian leaders responsible for bringing the Olympics to Rio, Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, did not attend the opening ceremony.
The rings were yet another reference to the global environmental crisis, an inherent theme in much of the opening ceremony and this year’s Games.
Yesterday, the Secretary-General met with the Olympic Refugee Team. Francis wished each of the 10 athletes success, saying he hoped that “your courage and strength find expression through the Olympic Games and serve as a cry for peace and solidarity”.
The ceremony concluded with more fireworks and a stunning visual show as the Olympic cauldron was lit and risen into the air.
And with that, the athletes started to file out of the stadium and head for their beds, while the bulk of the crowd recorded the fireworks on their smartphone cameras.
Supermodel Gisele Bundchen was “The Girl From Ipanema” in #OpeningCeremony at #Rio2016.
The evidence wasn’t clear, but it is unlikely that Michael Phelps broke federal law at the Opening Ceremony in Rio on Friday.
According to a Rio police statement on Saturday, a mugger was intercepted by an officer a day earlier near Maracanã Stadium, where the opening ceremony of the Olympics took place, and was gunned down.
A lot of work was put into the opening ceremony last night, and surprisingly, the budget did not stretch anywhere near as large as the one for London 2012, or even the 2008 games in Beijing.
Producers carried the audience through history of the Portuguese invaders’ subjugation of indigenous tribes, the use of African slave labour to build the country to contemporary Brazil’s majestic cities.
Then Brazil’s Acting President Michel Temer has declared Rio’s Summer Games to be open.
Rio-2016 Organizing Committee president, Carlos Nuzman, welcomed the athletes urging them to remain faithful to the Olympic ideology.
“They’re talking about slavery?”
Cordeiro de Lima may be familiar to some Olympics fans as the runner who was attacked by a spectator during the marathon event at the 2004 Olympics. “They have to talk about that”.
“I think so. Several”, Spitz said in Rio, when asked if he thought Phelps would win gold medals at this Olympics.
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From the favela came Brazilian funk, a contemporary mash-up of 20th century rhythms, sung by stars Karol Conka and 12-year-old MC Soffia.
