Egypt delegation enters the field during the Opening Ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
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The United States has the biggest team with 554 athletes.
PELÉ PULLS OUT. Pelé did not attend yesterday’s opening ceremony because of poor health, denying Brazilians a chance to celebrate their greatest sports figure. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY.
During his speech, Bach also paid tribute to the refugee team which will compete in Rio under the Olympic flag.
Security was tight Friday at the Olympics opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro after protests by thousands of Brazilians angry at political upheaval, corruption and the cost of the Games.
An artist performs during the opening ceremony for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 5 2016. The goal was to show the history of Brazil, from indigenous people until modernity.
“It was reflected beautifully in a simple way”.
Iconic, historic and, at the same time, the site of one of the country’s indelible moments of shame: a shock defeat to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup final, a memory so devastating that it even deserves its own word. The clash of cultures, as the ceremony showed, is what makes Brazil the complex mosaic that it is. Protecting and sustaining Brazil’s environment will be a theme of the opening, and will continue throughout the games.
After the grandeur of Beijing’s opening ceremony in 2008 and the high-tech, cheeky inventiveness of London’s in 2012, Rio’s was earthier and less swish but more sobering with its gloomy environmental look at the future and deliberate penny-pinching.
Yep. What followed was more song, a dance about conflict, and a lengthy segment about the negative effects of climate change. Once he had crossed the stadium floor, he secured the Stars and Stripes in a flag stand at one end of the stadium.
Michel Temer, Brazil’s interim president for the past three months while Dilma Roussef is suspended pending an impeachment trial, knew better than to risk the wrath of those who came to start the party.
The race’s route – which runs along Ipanema Beach, heads up into the mountains overlooking Rio, and then descends back again to a finish in front of the sands of Copacabana Beach – guarantees stunning beauty, but at least early on Saturday, couldn’t compete with the other attractions provided by one of the most attractive beaches on the planet.
About 3,000 people occupied the busy avenue running along Copacabana beach, while a smaller crowd including radical leftists faced off with mounted police near the Maracana stadium where the opening was to be staged.
The Olympic men’s cycling road race began at 9:30 a.m. local time on Saturday morning, but just down the road from the starter’s line, you would have no idea.
Protesters, many of them from Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party, said Brazil’s deep economic and social problems are being swept under the carpet.
“They’re talking about slavery?” “We are living in a world of crises, mistrust and uncertainty”, he said. “They have to talk about that”. Less successful was the section honoring the music and dance of Brazil’s (in) famous favelas, city slums that are steeped in poverty and violence but are also fertile breeding grounds for a beguiling, multicultural blend of music and dance.
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Kip Keino, a two-time Olympic champion who went on to open an orphanage in his native Kenya, gave a heartfelt speech at the opening ceremony of the Games.
