Welcome to day one of the Games, with Rio having just drenched us in all in the trademark colours, sights and sounds you’d expect of a South American opening ceremony, but also, rather more awkwardly, a long and rather bleak lecture about the perils of climate change. In a fascinating bait and switch move, the Brazilian organisers promised us MacGyver but served up an entirely different kind of American hero: Al Gore.
There was a lot to take in but we did our very best.
The big picture
Such are the myriad sobering realities facing both Brazil and the world at large right now, you’d suppose we all would have felt a little guilty completely giving over to the Eurovision-on-HGH shlock that is your average Olympic ceremony. And yet Rio kept it both fun and real, shooting fireworks past our ears and dancing up a storm but also occasionally muting the sound system, yanking the TV remote out of our hands and flicking it onto National Geographic for a while.
Samba great Paulinho Da Viola strummed his way through the national anthem in a shiny blue suit and there was plenty of gaiety, with music from Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Anitta, but then Judi Dench dropped by to read a poem about global environmental disaster. Barney Ronay put it best:
We’re sorry, Dame Judi Dench. We’ll try not to drop litter, or massively multiply as a species, or exist as captive consuming proles. All of which seems to annoy you.
In a four-hour scramble through Brazil’s history, City of God director and opening ceremony creator Fernando Meirelles had plenty of tricks up his sleeves but also gave it to us straight. For every bit of kitsch fluff like Gisele Bündchen’s catwalk stroll there was a deeper moment to ponder, like the entrance of the specially-created team of refugees or the emotional appearance of the man who lit the Olympic cauldron: Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, the marathon runner denied victory at the Athens games when he was assailed during the race by a defrocked Irish priest.
Elsewhere, there was the not-inconsiderable matter of 279 Russian athletes now being cleared to compete in these Games, down from the original team of 389 but still far more than we’d expected. Among them is four-time world champion breaststroke star Yuliya Efimova.
You should also know:
- An Uber driver has made it to see his son compete thanks to a passenger’s kindness
- Marina Hyde says Fifa is awful, but the Olympics take the gold medal for sleaze
- Robert Kitson has cast his eyes over the likely stars in the pool
Picture of the day
There was some spectacular visual effects throughout the course of the opening ceremony and they were captured no better than in this Tom Jenkins picture of smoke and lights descending on the Maracana like a magical pink jellyfish.
Diary
All times are listed are Rio times: add four hours for UK, add 13 hours for eastern Australia; subtract one hour for east-coast US and four for west coast. If that has given you a headache, let the internet do the work for you.
- Shooters and rowers have the honour of getting the Games under way on day one, the 10m women’s air rifle qualification and the first heat of the men’s single sculls kicking off a busy opening day at 8:30am.
- An hour later, all eyes will be on the men’s cycling road race, with three-times Tour de France champion Chris Froome among the favourites for gold once 150 miles of tarmac have been eaten up.
- Medals are also up for grabs in archery, fencing, judo, shooting and weightlifting.
- And in the pool, an exciting day of action awaits with plenty to look forward to from the very specific time of 1:08pm, including Britain’s Adam Peaty, US sensation Katie Ledecky, the legendary Michael Phelps, and Australia’s Campbell sisters.
- Otherwise, the tennis, rugby sevens, hockey, basketball and beach volleyball competitions are among those to get up and running, while women’s football continues, with gold medal favourites the US meeting France, Australia’s Matildas playing Germany, and hosts Brazil v Sweden among the highlights.
You can find the full event schedule for day one here.
Team GB roundup
In case there was any doubt, Team Great Britain has its sights set on gathering a lot of excess luggage in the form of medals in the next two weeks. Owen Gibson reports on that and the team.
Among the boffins with their virtual medal tables, Gracenote has predicted that Team GB will hit third with a haul of 56. At Wolverhampton University, Professor Alan Nevill’s mathematical formulae has predicted they will fall just short of their target with 46.
Team USA roundup
As Team USA move through the final moments of preparations and the Games get under way, Bryan Armen Graham ponders what kind of relief this Olympic fortnight could provide for such a divided and unsettled country.
These Games of the XXXI Olympiad may never have come at a more desperately necessary time for the United States. Not since Mexico City 1968 has the US team left behind a country in deeper turmoil and division – and a population more in need of 17 days of respite.
Australia team roundup
Proudly bopping along to the music in their seersucker jackets, the 103 Australians who took part in the opening ceremony appeared to avoid any major pratfalls. Not so reigning 50km walk gold medalist Jared Tallent, who has pulled out of the 20km event after feeling “a niggle” in his hamstring. He’ll still seek to defend his 50km title.
Underdog of the day
Well you can hardly look past Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, can you? Speculation leading into to the opening ceremony suggested that Pelé might get the nod for cauldron-lighting duties, but after his heart-breaking moment at Athens 2004, instead it was the former marathoner who held the opening-ceremony-watching-world’s undivided attention.
Tweet of the day
There was a surprising lack of controversial tweeting from attending athletes but it’s pretty hard to go past this fashion gambit from the New Zealand team, whose flag-bearers channelled Game of Thrones and delighted the world in the process.
The Lords of Winterfell!! #OpeningCeremony 🏅 pic.twitter.com/ByTUIwbvjG
— Lilian Klemz (@liliklemz) August 6, 2016
If today were a movie or TV show
It would be City of God... kidding! We’re not going to resort to lazy stereotypes here. In actual fact, with all of that talk of impending environmental doom, at times the opening ceremony was a little like attending a human rights film festival. We nodded, we shook our heads ruefully, and now as we walk through the theatre lobby and discard our popcorn boxes, it’s back to the equally sobering reality of remembering where we parked our gas-guzzling cars.
And another thing
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