If ever there was a Games that cried out for the glow of a lit cauldron, these are those Games.
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After Brazil’s most famous athlete – soccer star Pele – said he will not appear, the Olympic mystery of who might light the cauldron had remained intact.
Finally, the familiar symbols of the Olympic movement took hold Friday night, and with them, perhaps, a reprieve. “Wow”, Bryan Hossy, a black Brazilian who watched the ceremony in a bar in Copacabana, told the Reuters news agency. Then there was the doping scandal that at one point put the entire Russian team at risk of being barred from competition.We hope that as with previous games that experienced troubles in the planning stage, once the competition gets started people will forget about all the other issues and focus on the astonishing athletes vying for Olympic glory.In our area, residents have special rooting interests this year, with Conrad Weiser High School graduate Jackie Briggs playing goalie for the USA field hockey team, and Mertztown resident Bobby Lea, a cyclist competing in the grueling six-race event known as omnium.
Producers carried the audience through history to contemporary Brazil as a majestic city skyline emerged, depicting dense Brazilian metropolises such as Sao Paulo, the largest city in South America and the biggest in the southern hemisphere.
Russia’s team – reduced in number amid doping allegations – proudly took its place in the parade of competitors which included the first Refugee team in Olympic history.
Instead, that honor went to Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, a Brazilian former marathoner who won a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
While the Rio 2016 organizing committee has not said how much the ceremony cost, it is believed to be about half of the $42 million spent by London in 2012. Here is our Olympic answer.
The opening ceremony, a cut-price but welcome moment of levity for a nation beset by economic and political troubles, 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.
Deflategate apparently didn’t travel here. Body parts literally washing up on the beach. But it came as Brazil battles a crippling recession, double-digit unemployment and rising crime, and as Temer fights off political turmoil. And more. Way more. The colossal Christ the Redeemer statue was bathed in Brazilian yellow and green.
“We are opening the Olympic experience to new regions of the world. Now, with your great talent and human spirit, you are making a great contribution to society”.
Track and field will see Jamaica’s Bolt aim to defend his 100m, 200m and 4x100m crowns by clinching all three for the third straight Games.
“What we found in 2012 in London, when we streamed everything for the first time, what we found is there was no cannibalization whatsoever”, NBC Sports digital media executive Rick Cordella said, referring the prospect of web streams stealing viewership from television broadcasts. We welcome to you to Rio, the Olympic city.
Daniel Jobim, the grandson of Brazilian composer Tom Jobim, performs during the opening ceremony for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 5, 2016.
Organisers had promised a party and a cool one at that.
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Let’s get it started.
