Brazil takes Rio flame on 100-day countdown

‘Games will be ready, storm clouds are gathering’ Five Things to Watch 100 Days from the Rio Olympics

ATHENS, April 27, (AFP): Greece on Wednesday handed the Olympic flame over to Rio Games officials setting off the 100-day countdown to the Aug 5 opening ceremony.

“Brazil is waiting for the flame with excitement and passion,” said Rio 2016 organising committee chairman Carlos Nuzman, adding that the Games would feature “plenty of music, poetry, love”. “Rio is ready to make history,” he said. The ceremony took place at the historic all-marble Olympic stadium in Athens, site of the first modern Games in 1896.

For the rest of the evening, the stadium will be lit in Brazilian green and yellow, the Brazilian embassy in Athens said.

The flame was kindled on April 21 in the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera at Ancient Olympia, and carried on a weeklong relay on Greek soil.

Before landing in Brasilia on May 3, it will make a brief stopover in Switzerland.

It will be presented at the United Nations office in Geneva on Friday and placed on display over the weekend at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the seat of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Some 12,000 torchbearers will then carry the flame through over 300 Brazilian cities ahead of the opening of the summer Games on Aug 5.

Olympic organisers this year are including references to the migration crisis gripping Europe.

Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday launched the 100 day countdown to hosting South America’s first Olympic Games with government and global sports leaders insisting they can overcome Brazil’s political SAO PAULO, April 27, (RTRS): The Summer Olympics are scheduled to start in Rio de Janeiro on Aug 5. Here is a list of five things to watch.

Public transport Satnav maker TomTom last month named Rio de Janeiro the world’s fourth-most congested city. Much of that is due to construction work on new bus lanes, tram lines and metro stops.

But while many bus lanes are operative and successful, the key 16 km (9.9mile) metro extension toward the Barra da Tijuca beachfront area that will host many of the venues is not complete. Officials say it will be ready in time, but the last stop would still be a long way from the Olympic Park. Brazil has failed to invest in traffic infrastructure for years. Patience may be necessary.

Ticket sales Less than two-thirds of the tickets have been sold for the August Olympics and only one-quarter for the Paraolympics in September.

Corporate insiders said they could not give away their tickets because violence

meltdown and troubled preparations.

New Zealand athletes marked the 100 day countdown with a traditional Haka dance on an Auckland beach at sunrise. Buildings around the world lit up in special colors — Brazilian yellow and green at Tokyo’s Municipal Government Headquarters

President of the Hellenic Olympic Committee Spyros Kapralos (left), passes the Olympic flame to Rio 2016 Organising Committee President Carlos Nuzman (right), during the handover ceremony at the Panathinean Stadium in Athens, on April 27. Greece on April 27 handed over to Brazilian officials the Olympic flame of the Rio Games as the 100-day countdown to the August 5 opening ceremony begins.

(AFP)

and the Zika virus have scared people off and because airline and hotel prices are so high. Officials are betting on a last-minute rush, but the prospect of rows of empty seats, especially for less glamorous events, is a real fear.

Social unrest A cleanup that never materialized for Rio’s Guanabara Bay and the deaths of two people when a cycle lane collapsed last week have prompted many locals to question what they are getting out of the Games.

The question is all the more relevant given the state of Rio’s public finances. Thousands of pensioners will not get paid this month because the state is bankrupt “and on the verge of social collapse,” state official Leonardo Espindola told Rio’s O Globo this week.

Hospitals and schools are closing or reducing hours because they cannot afford to operate. Further cutbacks could prompt more anger.

Last-minute preparations Power outages affected the scoring and lighting at swimming and gymnastics

and US red-white-blue for the Empire State Building in New York.

Several countries also unveiled their Olympic uniforms, including Britain with a set designed by Stella McCartney and the US team turning to Ralph Lauren.

With Rio’s hills, beaches and the famed statue of Christ the Redeemer providing one of the most telegenic backdrops in the world, the Games are expected to be spectacular.

But despite the insistence of the Brazilian government and International Olympic Committee that everything will be ready, storm clouds are gathering.

President Dilma Rousseff appears likely to be suspended from office through impeachment in the next few weeks. Even her vice president, Michel Temer, who test events this month, and there is clearly still work to do to get everything ready. Rio officials said they would correct all the problems before the games begin on Aug 5.

“Test events are there to detect problems raised by athletes and national federations,” Olympics chief Carlos Nuzman told concerned members of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations in Lausanne, Switzerland, last week.

Security Brazil has never been the target of terrorist attacks, and officials say they have taken every precaution to maintain that record.

But vigilance has been increased after Islamic State attacks in Europe and even more so after Brazil’s military intelligence confirmed as legitimate a threat made via Twitter by a known French Islamic State terrorist.

Security officials said this month that the probability that the country will be the target of terrorist attacks had risen in the last few months.

past month and at least 307 people were killed by police in the city last year — amounting to 20 percent of all homicides.

Murders and violent muggings in even the most heavily policed, well-off parts of Rio in the last few weeks have also prompted concern for the safety of the estimated half to one million tourists expected to flood the city.

Terrorism is another worry, although Brazilian officials say a high-tech center to coordinate international security teams will be up to the task.

Officials say that Olympic sites are 98 percent complete. However, there are serious delays to the velodrome, while a crucial extension of Rio’s currently limited metro system is only due to open at the start of July, leaving dangerously little wiggle room.

Promises to clean up the horrific sewage and garbage pollution in the bay where sailing and windsurfing contests will take place have been largely abandoned.

IOC president Thomas Bach has predicted Rio will lay on an “excellent” Games and Brazil’s Sports Minister Ricardo Leyser insisted to AFP that the political crisis will have “no effect at all.”

But setting up the world’s biggest sporting event in a city battered by decades of under-investment in infrastructure and in a country riven by a giant corruption scandal has been full of difficulties.

Rio authorities admitted this week that 11 people died over the past three years on Olympics-related construction projects.