We have always believed in you," IOC president Thomas Bach said.Another cauldron was lit in the city’s port area early Saturday that will be displayed for Rio residents to enjoy.There were times after the International Olympic Committee selected Rio ahead of Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid in 2009 when it seemed that the city of 6. The spreading health crisis of the mosquito-born Zika virus kept some athletes away.". After all, nowhere parties quite like Rio.Shoals of samba dancers flowed in a rainbow of colors, but many showed less flesh than normal for Brazil, seemingly mindful of their global TV audience. "It’s disappearing very quickly. Fewer than 25 foreign heads of state were listed as attending, with others seemingly staying away to avoid giving the impression of taking sides amid Brazil’s leadership uncertainty.After one of the roughest-ever rides from vote to games by an Olympic host, the city of beaches, carnival, grinding poverty and sun-kissed wealth celebrated Brazil’s can-do spirit, biodiversity and melting-pot history.

Her ouster less than four months ahead of the games for alleged budget violations was one of many spanners in the works of Brazil’s Olympic preparations and impacted the opening ceremony itself. Promises to clean up Rio’s filthy waters remained unfulfilled."But it wasn’t all doom and gloom.The cannonball-shaped cauldron was lit by Brazilian marathoner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima. The heavy bill for the games, at least $12 billion, made them unpopular with many. At his fifth and last Olympics, it was the first time the record holder of 22 medals had marched in an opening ceremony, having skipped previous ones to save energy for competition. Fireworks formed the word "Rio" in the skies.What it lacked in flash, Rio made up for with feeling.The honour of officially declaring the games open fell to Michel Temer, Brazil’s unpopular interim President, who was loudly jeered and faced shouts of "out with Temer".

The colossal Christ the Redeemer statue was bathed in Brazilian yellow and green. At the 2004 games, an Irish spectator wearing a kilt, knee-socks and a beret tackled de Lima while he was leading the Olympic marathon. When 40 per cent of the homes in Brazil have no sanitation, you can’t really be spending a billion reals for a show. "It is not a good message for the world. Only Brazil’s team, which marched last, drew a louder roar from the crowd than the refugees.The athletes were given tree seeds, plus cartridges of soil.After the grandeur of Beijing’s opening ceremony and the high-tech, socks manufacturing machines cheeky inventiveness of London’s, Rio’s was earthier and less swish but more sobering with its gloomy environmental look at the future and deliberate penny-pinching."Our admiration is even greater because you managed this at a very difficult time in Brazilian history. Just. Another woman pushed Nemati’s wheelchair.

As a consequence, Russia’s team was whittled down from a hoped-for 389 athletes to around 270. Creative director Fernando Meirelles said their budget, slashed by half as Brazil’s economic recession bit ever harder, "is 12 times less than London, 20 times less than Beijing.""It is pretty tacky to be overspending," he said.5 million people might not get its act together for the world’s greatest sporting mega-event. Heavily armed security stopped a small group of protesters from getting close to the stadium ahead of the ceremony. Their flag-bearer, Rose Nathike Lokonyen, fled war in South Sudan and ran her first race in a refugee camp in northern Kenya.The crowd roared when Bundchen sashayed from one side of the 78,000-seat arena to the other, as Tom Jobim’s grandson, Daniel, played his grandfather’s famous song about the Ipanema girl "tall and tan and young and lovely". When the seeds sprout, they will be planted in a Rio park.""In the end I feel good that I am not spending money that Brazil hasn’t got.Supermodel Gisele Bundchen shimmered to the tune of The Girl from Ipanema.

She was paralysed in a car accident as a teenager.With "USA" emblazoned on the back of his jacket, Michael Phelps carried the flag for the US team, the largest with 549 competitors. They were joined by a first-ever Refugee Olympic Team of 10 athletes, displaced from Syria, South Sudan, Congo and Ethiopia."The heat is melting the icecap," a voice intoned in the Maracana Stadium. Dancers, all hips and wobble, grooved to thumping funk and sultry samba beats.Iran picked a woman, archer Zahra Nemati, as flag-bearer for its team made up overwhelmingly of men.Greece, the historical and spiritual home of the games, led the march by athletes into the stadium.But with more than a dash of "gambiarra", the Brazilian art of quick-fixes and making do, Rio is ready.With a limited budget, the consequence of a biting recession that roiled preparations for South America’s first Olympics, Brazil laced its high-energy opening party for the games of the 31st Olympiad with a sobering message of the dangers of global warming. He was standing in for suspended President Dilma Rousseff.

Instead of gold, he fell back to take bronze.In a video preceding the show, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the games "celebrate the best of humanity" and appealed for an Olympic truce, calling on "all warring parties to lay down their weapons" during the two weeks of sporting achievement.On behalf of all 11,288 competitors (6,182 men; 5,106 women), Brazilian two-time Olympic champion sailor Robert Scheidt pledged that they won’t take banned drugs — an oath likely to ring false to fans after the scandal of government-orchestrated cheating in Russia.Graphic projections of world cities being swamped by rising seas set Rio de Janeiro’s otherwise fun and festive gala apart from the more self-congratulatory and lavish celebrations that Beijing and London wowed with in 2008 and 2012