Olympics: Pele out of opening ceremony

Since the event won’t able to avoid the issues that are gripping Brazil – a president facing impeachment, a deep recession and environmental threats – organizers made sure that global warming and the environment, especially the country’s magnificent Amazon rainforest, are important parts of the Olympic opening ceremony. The peace symbol, tweaked into the shape of a tree, was projected onto the floor of the Maracana Stadium that filled with thousands of athletes from 207 teams.

Like the country it represented, the 2016 Olympic opening ceremony was a colorful, musical mashup of history, culture, music and political messaging that culminated in the lighting of a unique Olympic torch and traditional fireworks.

The cauldron in central Rio is expected to be lit by a runner after the opening ceremony is finished, Howe said.

Brazil’s acting president Michel Temer declared open the first ever Olympic Games in South America in the iconic Maracana Stadium.

With a limited budget, the effect of a biting recession that roiled preparations for South America’s first Olympics, Brazil laced its high-energy opening party for the games of the 31st Olympiad with a sobering message of the dangers of global warming.

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.

Brazilian media are tipping sailing great Torben Grael and three-time French Open victor Gustavo Kuerten as potential candidates to light the cauldron in Pele’s absence. She refused to attend the ceremony, leaving Temer in her place with a hostile reception from the crowd predicted.

Greece, the historical and spiritual home of the games, led the march by athletes into the stadium. Their flag-bearer, Rose Nathike Lokonyen, fled war in South Sudan and ran her first race in a refugee camp in northern Kenya.

Athletes also joined Brazil’s cause on environment preservation as each of them was handed a seed of the country’s native trees after they paraded into the stadium. When they sprout, they will be planted in a Rio park.

And the roar the crowd gave the likes of Spain’s Rafael Nadal and the United States team, led by Michael Phelps, would support the view that has been growing here that Rio is ready to forget its concerns about the broken political system, struggling economy and alarming Zika virus to enjoy its moment as the centre of the world’s attention. Although it escaped a blanket ban, Russian Federation is paying the price in the shape of a smaller team, whittled down from a 389 athletes to around 270.

Iran’s flag bearer was wheelchair-bound Zahra Nemati, their first ever female flag-carrier who will compete in archery despite being paralysed in both legs. She was paralyzed in a auto accident as a teenager. “We are calling for action”, said Fernando Meirelles, one of the directors of the show.

“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”.

Sweden team pose for a photo before a group B match of the men’s Olympic football tournament between Sweden and Colombia at the Amazonia Arena, in Manaus, Brazil, Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016.

NBC will broadcast the opening ceremony on a one-hour tape delay because it wants the entertainment spectacle to be shown completely in US prime time.