Only Brazil’s team, which marched last, drew a louder roar from the crowd than the refugees. The colossal Christ the Redeemer statue was bathed in Brazilian yellow and green.
Advertisement
Olympic facilities have been plagued with other problems, such as the collapse of a boat ramp a week ago that still has not been fixed, and worries about sanitary conditions, such as water pollution and the threat of Zika virus transmission through mosquito bites.
Rio chose to take it back – way back to when microbial life started.
Some two dozen heads of state and government and 50,000 spectators are expected to attend the torch ceremony at Rio’s Maracana stadium on Friday night, with some 3 billion people tuning in around the world. It was reinforced in 1936 when US flag bearer did not dip the flag as an act of protest against Adolf Hitler.
In recent history, the Olympic cauldron’s design trend has been the bigger, the better.
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.
VoteMake your Olym-picks: How will they do in Rio?
That message was reiterated when International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach talked about the first team of refugees who will compete in these games as a team under the Olympic flag.
Police shot a mugger near the stadium where the Rio Olympics opening ceremony took place and a woman was killed close to another Olympic site, police said Saturday.
Following Pele’s withdrawal from the event, De Lima became one of the strongest contenders to light up the Olympic flame.
While it escaped a blanket ban, Russian Federation is paying the price in the shape of a smaller team, whittled down from 389 athletes to around 270. The 18-time gold medalist was named flag bearer for the Team USA earlier this week. Another woman pushed Nemati’s wheelchair.
That was never going to be an issue for Brazil’s team, which brought the parade to its traditional conclusion five minutes short of two hours, and only five minutes behind schedule as the crowd erupted with the athletes dancing across stage.
Unlike the opening ceremonies in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, a financially constrained Brazil had little choice but to put on a more “analogue” show, with minimal high-tech and a heavy dependence on the vast talent of Brazil and its Carnival party traditions. Brazil entered recession in 2015 and is now immersed in economic and political strife.
“It is pretty tacky to be overspending”, he said. “When 40 percent of the homes in Brazil have no sanitation, you can’t really be spending a billion reals for a show”.
Advertisement
“It feels incredible. Honestly, I love being in Rio”.
