Rio´s glittering opening launches Olympic was posted in Sports of TheNews International – https://www.thenews.com.pk on August 06, 2016 and was last updated on August 06, 2016.
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France´s President Francois Hollande and Argentina´s Mauricio Macri were among a handful of state leaders in the VIP box with Brazil´s troubled interim leader Michel Temer.
Before the show, in a video broadcast inside the 78,000-seat Maracana Stadium, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the games “celebrate the best of humanity” and appealed for an Olympic truce, calling on “all warring pries to lay down their weapons” during the two weeks of sporting achievement.
More than 500 Americans are on the Olympic team, though as was the case with Phelps in past years, not all of them marched in the opening.
Small groups of protesters waving banners reading “Exclusion Games” gathered near the Maracana stadium where Friday’s opening ceremony will be held, but heavily armed riot police barred the streets and prevented them from approaching the venue. What Danny Boyle was able to pull off with his budget was unbelievable because it looks as though they spent as much money as they did in Beijing. Although the outfits look rather plain, they attracted a good deal of media attention for a hidden feature: The clothes are infused with a mosquito-repellent to protect athletes against the Zika virus.
The 271 Russian athletes – out of an original entry list of 389 – who walked into the stadium were only officially cleared to take part in the Games on Thursday.
Athletes from 205 nations and territories were marching behind their flags, joined by a first-ever Refugee Olympic Team of 10 athletes, displaced from Syria, South Sudan, Congo and Ethiopia.
Each athlete was handed a cartridge of soil and a seed to deposit onstage, with the 11,000 seeds ultimately headed for a park in the Deodoro region of Rio, where they will grow into an “athletes’ forest”.
With Rio organisers forced to cut budgets for the Games due to the on-going economic recession, many had expected a low-key show unlike that of London 2012’s pop culture-fueled, fun show, and that of Beijing grand coming out extravaganza in 2008.
Michael Phelps could break federal law at the Opening Ceremony in Rio on Friday.
With 554 athletes, the United States has the largest Olympic team while 100m runner Etimoni Timuani is the only athlete from Tuvalu.
Fernando Meirelles, who won Oscars for his film City of God, has complained that the economic crisis in Brazil has slashed his original budget in half.
“It is pretty tacky to be overspending”, he said.
“We are living in a world where selfishness is gaining ground, where certain people claim to be superior to others”, he said of the Olympians representing displaced people across the world.
Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil headline a show that’s heavy on samba drums and dancing, highlighting Brazil’s history and heritage.
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Family, supporters and friends and the NZ Club show their excitement as Nova Zealandia appear at the opening ceremony. There will be two cauldrons in Rio, one at the Maracana and another open to the public in downtown Rio.
