The Rio Olympics officially started with loud celebration of Brazilian culture, combined with Rio’s famous ‘Samba Dance’ together with powerful message of global warming plaguing the world.
This was the first Olympics to introduce a Refugee Team which will participate under the UNO flag.
Brazil’s Acting President Michel Temer declared open the Games, the first to be held in South America, in the presence of International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach, who gave a lengthy speech, and United Nations head, Ban—Ki Moon.
“I declare the Rio Olympics open, and celebrate the 31st Olympic Games of the modern era,” Temer said to formally signal the commencement of competitions as the Rio night sky was lit with fireworks emanating from Maracana Stadium.
After the formal declaration of the Games, Brazilian 2004 Athens Olympics marathon bronze winner Vanderlei de Lima lit the Olympic cauldron after former tennis world number one and three—time French Open winner Gustavo Kuerten brought the torch into the arena to the thunderous applause of spectators.
“It is not enough to stop harming the planet, it’s time to begin healing it, is the message of this Olympic.
Greece, the birthplace of ancient Olympics, led the athletes’ parade with the host’s country Brazil coming last. The countries marched in alphabetical order based on the spelling of their names in Portuguese.
Led by its only individual gold medalist Abhinav Bindra, as the flag bearer, the Indian contingent entered the stadium as 95th country.
Around 70 Indian athletes (out of 118) and 24 officials took part in the march past with the male athletes wearing navy blue colour blazer and trousers and their female counterparts wearing blue blazer and traditional Saree.
Among the officials who were part of the march past were chef-de-mission Rakesh Gupta and his deputy Anandeswar Pandey.
The men’s hockey players skipped the parade as they have a match against Ireland. The archery, table tennis and weightlifting teams also skipped the opening ceremony.
Officials had predicted as 100 heads of state would attend the first Olympics in South America. But only about 25 attended the ceremony, probably because of very uncertain political times in Brazil.
(Prepared from media sources by Seema Kumari)
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As the opening ceremony of 31st Olympics Rio 2016 was mesmerising for whole world. As 209 countries has participated and hope so this time India may bring gold as much as possible to their homeland and can makes our country feel proud all over the world. All the best to them and may tge best win.