Rio opens Olympics with celebration and serious message

“Our admiration is even greater because you managed this at a very hard time in Brazilian history”.

Brazil has deployed some 85 000 police and troops, roughly twice the number at London’s 2012 Olympics, to protect locals and the half million tourists expected to visit the city.

Stretching almost four hours, the opening ceremony turned from a celebration of Brazilian history, music and culture into an appeal to help save the environment and come together as human beings.

Still, the beauty of the ceremony was moving from the taste of Brazil’s multicultural history to the unusual move of creating a legacy that honors the athletes and benefits the city of Rio de Janeiro.

“This will be a symbol of hope for all the refugees in our world, and will make the world better aware of the magnitude of this crisis”, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said when the team was announced on June 3.

The low-tech, cut-price opening ceremony, a moment of levity for a nation beset by economic and political woes, featured performers as slaves, labouring 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.

Temer took over when impeachment proceedings started against President Dilma Rousseff, whose supporters accuse him of plotting against the suspended leader.

Chinese athletes marched into the stadium in their usual red and yellow outfits, the colors representing the national flag.

The cauldron was lit by De Lima, who won bronze for Brazil in the marathon at the 2004 Games after he was grappled by a spectator while leading the race. The 11,000 seeds will be planted in the Radical Park in Deodoro to become a legacy from the Games to the host city.

Swimming legend Michael Phelps said the honor of being the US flag bearer was something that he could not pass up. The women’s competition begins on Saturday. The IOC approved 271 Russian athletes to compete in Rio, while rejecting 118 after weeks of controversy and acrimony that often found Bach and other top IOC officials on the defensive in the wake of World Anti-Doping Agency report detailing a widespread, state-sponsored doping program within Russia.

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. Players were set to wear their ceremony uniforms and essentially pretend marching, as if they were in Rio.

“It is pretty tacky to be overspending”, he said.

The torch’s three-month, 20,000km journey across Brazil ran into difficulties this week as protests flared in towns around Rio against the Games’ $US12 billion price tag, at a time of high unemployment, rising crime and cutbacks to health and education spending.