The Rio Mayor, Eduardo Paes carried the Olympic torch on its first few laps of the city centre
*Brazilians set to put the best of their culture on display
Finally, the zero hour to the official Opening Ceremony of the 31st Olympic Games is here. With an estimated 900 million people around the world expected to watch the show on Friday night in Brazil (but early hours of tomorrow in Nigeria), every other thing in global sport can wait.
The world’s best athletes who have been preparing for this four-yearly sports spectacle are set to show the stuff they are made of.
12,000 athletes, including Team Nigeria’s 85-man contingent, will march into the stadium behind their own little samba bands, waving their countries’ flags.
Of course, the venue to flag off the show cannot be any other place than the iconic Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, the pride of the Brazilian people. Football that the Brazilians have taken to a different level until recently when their fortunes began to flounder, will feature prominently in every aspect of what the global viewing public will see at this opening fiesta.
According to the organizers of the show, supermodel Gisele Bundchen will put her acting skills to the test when she is ‘mugged’ in an elaborate scene that is a brutally honest reflection on life Rio de Janeiro.
However, in what many see as ‘sign of the moment’ in the host country Brazil, organisers of opening ceremony have reportedly made plans to drown out booing with loud music if the country’s interim President, Michel Temer, is jeered in the stadium.
Temer will formally declare the Olympic Games open, but because the Brazilian government is so unpopular the organisers fear he will be heckled, as George Osborne was at the London 2012 Paralympics
The president admitted yesterday that he knows he might be booed. To counter that embarrassment, organizers have planned that loud music or sound effects will be played as soon as he finishes speaking, so that any jeers are not heard by the billions of people expected to watch it on television. His short declaration is only 14 words long.
After the speech, the ceremony proper will roll on with the Brazil’s love affair with football also gets showcased, with one post showing the floor lit up with green and white pitch markings and a diamond-like structure that evokes the pattern of a football.
Opening Ceremony Director, Fernando Meirelles, reported shines a spotlight on the best of Brazil during the three-hour presentation – but doesn’t shy away from describing the country’s social problems either.
Then, as Gisele , the world’s highest paid supermodel and one of Brazil’s most famous stars, struts down a catwalk to the sound of a Brazilian bossa nova jazz classic The Girl From Ipanema, she is held up by an actor and robbed, according to internet posts.
A chase will then takes place around the 78,000-seater stadium as police officers race to catch the assailant before.
During the show, music, dance and 3D projections will trace the history of Brazil, its music, conquests and contribution to the world, using a cast of 300 professional dancers and 5,000 volunteers.
The show will reveal a call for peace, before moving through Brazil’s jungles with the indigenous tribes to its cities and the colonisers – ending up in its slums for the main part of the ceremony.
But it will not be a ‘chronological’ piece, telling the tale of the arrival of Brazil’s many different inhabitants over the years, Director Leonardo Caetano insisted.
On the night, the ceremony will use 2,000 light guns, 3,000 kilos of fireworks and 109 projectors to create its magic.
They will also be performing an important role, planting a sapling in a totem which will grow to become a forest of 12,000 trees in Deodoro Olympic Park, according to Globo.
The spectacle will also feature British actress Judi Dench, who will read a poem alongside Brazilian film and TV star Fernanda Montenegro. It is thought the theme will revolve around global problems.
…Protest Mars Olympic Torch Arrival in Rio
Chaotic scenes marred the arrival of the Olympic torch in Rio de Janeiro late on Wednesday evening.
Hundreds of demonstrators angry at the high cost of hosting the Games protested and riot police used tar gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
Images on news websites showed at least one policeman appearing to fire a projectile directly at a protester.
The Olympic torch arrived in Rio de Janeiro by boat after a three-month tour of Brazilian cities.
The mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, carried the torch on its first few laps through the city centre.
But images taken later showed crowds of people including many families with children who had come out to watch the torch relay running away in fear from the police action.
The police told local media that a group of people refused to leave one lane of the road open for the torch as had been agreed earlier and blocked the street in one place.
They said they had to intervene to contain the chaos and clear the road.
The BBC’s Wyre Davies in Brazil says that this is exactly what Olympic organisers feared might happen after what has been a relatively peaceful and sometimes spectacular torch relay.
On Tuesday at least three protesters were arrested by the police in the town of Niteroi, across the bay from Rio during the torch relay there.
The police used pepper spray and part of the relay had to be abandoned.
Brazil is in the grip of a deep recession and political crisis, and further protests are expected ahead of the Olympic opening ceremony today. Organisers said that more than a million tickets remain unsold.
