Here are some of the happenings from the first official night of the Games.
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The rainforest was heavily represented – from the dress of the Brazilian team to the logo of the Olympics – as were the “favelas”, in a nod to the vast majority of the low-income population that make up the country.
After Brazil’s most famous athlete – soccer star Pele – said he will not appear, the Olympic mystery of who might light the cauldron remained intact.
Almost 5,000 performers were expected to take part in the ceremony, including Brazilian music stars Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso and supermodel Gisele Bundchen. Having won the Olympics in 2009 during an economic boom, Brazil since slipped into its worst recession in decades. One of the team’s coaches became concerned about conditions in the pool.
Protesters set fire to the Brazilian flag in Rio ahead of the Olympic Opening Ceremony on Friday, angry at a spectacle they feel has nothing to do with them. He is easily Brazil’s most recognizable athlete – or former athlete – even though he stopped playing nearly 40 years ago. “Now, with your great talent and human spirit, you are making a great contribution to society”.
Team GB tweeted that the moment gave them “goosebumps”.
Fireworks and laser-lit choreography launched the Rio Games on Friday as Brazil sought to forget seven years of troubled preparations and the Olympic movement temporarily put aside its doping crisis.
A loud blast shook the media seats near the finishing line of the men’s cycling road race on the first day of the Rio Olympics when Brazil’s bomb squad detonated an unattended backpack on Saturday, amid tight security at South America’s first Games.
Brazilian top model Gisele Bundchen. The Brazil native walked 500 feet in a custom Alexandre Herchcovitch gown, which was praised by some on the internet as the “longest runway walk ever”.
On behalf of all 11,288 competitors (6,182 men; 5,106 women), a Brazilian athlete will pledge an oath that they won’t take banned drugs – a promise likely to ring false to many fans after the scandal of government-orchestrated cheating in Russian Federation.
Rio’s opening ceremony also looked at the country’s history, going back to the lives of the indigenous people, the arrival of the Portuguese, their mass enslavement of Africans, and the later influxes of different immigrant groups to the country. Lea has blazed her own path in the fashion industry, working with everyone from Givenchy to Redken. NBC Olympics executive producer Jim Bell denied Tuesday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour that NBC had pressured the International Olympic Committee to announce the teams in English so that the United States could be one of the last countries to walk. The Tae Kwon Do competitor is sure to be a favorite in the coming weeks.
Cordeiro was leading the 2004 Olympic marathon when he was tackled by a spectator and missed out on a gold medal.
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It looked downright cheerful, and not much like the vision of favelas that Fernando Meirelles, who directed Rio’s opening ceremony, offered in his global hit City of God in 2002.
