In Opening Ceremony, Rio appears for Games
In Opening Ceremony, Rio appears for Games
RIO DE JANEIRO — With fireworks forming the word “Rio” in the sky and model Gisele Bundchen shimmering to the tune of “The Girl from Ipanema,” Rio de Janiero jubilantly welcomed the world Friday to the first Olympic Games in South America.
The ceremony, providing a moment of levity for a nation beset by economic and political woes, featured gravity-defying climbers hanging from buildings in Brazil’s teeming megacities and — of course — dancers, all hips and wobble, grooving to thumping funk and sultry samba.
The crowd roared when Bundchen sashayed from one side of the 78,000-seat arena to the other, as Antonio Carlos Jobim’s grandson, Daniel, played his grandfather’s famous song about the Ipanema girl “tall and tan and young and lovely.”
With “USA” emblazoned on the back of his jacket, Michael Phelps carried the flag for the U.S. team, the largest with 549 competitors, as they enterered the stadium.
At his fifth and last Olympics, it was the first time the record holder of 22 medals had marched in an Opening Ceremony.
[...] Brazil also packaged its party with solemnity, lacing the fun and frivolous show with sobering messages about global warming and conservation.
Images of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, swirling in Earth’s atmosphere were followed by projections of world cities and regions — Amsterdam, Florida, Shanghai, Dubai — being swamped by rising seas.
There were times after the International Olympic Committee selected Rio ahead of Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid in 2009 when it seemed that the city of 6.5 million people might not get its act together for the world’s greatest sporting mega-event.
At the 2004 games, an Irish spectator wearing a kilt, knee socks and a beret tackled de Lima while he was leading the Olympic marathon.