Opening ceremony really shows that Rio can deliver
Even in a sport-saturated world, the Olympics has a strange way of drawing us in, writes Declan Lynch
IT was a few minutes into the opening ceremony but we were already astonished — the sound quality on the BBC was grossly inferior to that on RTE.
The BBC folk seemed to be positioned in the back row of the stand, with the kind of recording equipment which they were using to interview Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, while in the mind’s eye George Hamilton sat serenely like Captain Kirk at the bridge, his RTE crew mastering the most futuristic technologies.
The Brazilians, putting to one side the fact that the actual Rain Forest is in a place which can only be described as Brazil, were frightening us with images of countries disappearing under the seas due to the ice-caps melting — but if RTE is killing the BBC on the opening night, it seems that nature has already been overthrown. That Britain after Brexit is already sunk.
Nor was it very “sustain- able” for Brazil to destroy our image of “The Girl from Ipanema”, who in Astrud Gilberto’s immortal rendition had always been laidback, languid, mysterious, not this storm-trooping supermodel, even if she is Gisele Bundchen.
But we were consoled by the traditional sight of competitors parading into the stadium who seem no more athletic than ourselves, from countries such as Aruba, which may not even be a country at all, but which will be involved in some capacity in the Sailing and the Taekwondo.
Then the ageless beauty of the Olympics arrives as always when we find ourselves on the opening day looking at Dressage, as if the gods have worked out the exact requirement for Dressage that lurks within the human soul, about 15 minutes every four years, no less and no more.
In a sport-saturated world, the Olympics can still give us the novelty of Single Sculling on a Saturday morning, and introduce us to “the Bad Boy of Judo”, one Ashley McKenzie, or even “the Bad Boy of Swimming”, a Chinese lad called Sun Yang who seems to be spurned by all right-thinking swimmers for his belligerent attitude, and for a doping suspension served in secret for taking a banned substance which he claimed he needed for a heart complaint.
Then again, if you were to go around Rio spurning everyone who had taken a banned substance for a heart complaint, you’d have no spurn left for the things that you really need to be spurning — things like the appalling arrogance of Brazil in clinging to this time zone of theirs which ensures that people in these islands who are intrinsically more important than anyone in South America, will be up half the night looking at the Long Jump. How “sustainable” is that?
On the upside, we are already seeing such glorious pictures of Rio as the backdrop to the Rowing and the Cycling, by week two we will probably have forgiven them that one — the Games really do bring out the best in all of us.