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Plumed figures appear as part of the closing ceremony in the Maracana stadium at the
2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday.
Samba, refl ections, pride
in fi nal Rio Olympics party
By PETER PRENGAMAN
and MAURICIO
SAVARESE
Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO —
Shaking to samba and express-
ing a sense of longing with
uniquely Brazilian words,
Olympians and fans said good-
bye to the Rio Games with one
last big bash that was both reve-
latory and a sigh of relief.
The closing ceremony Sun-
day celebrated the 16-day spec-
tacle that was the Rio Games,
which combined numerous
highlights with ugly and even
bizarre episodes that some-
times overshadowed competi-
tion. Cariocas — as Rio’s res-
idents are known — weren’t
swayed by the issues that led up
to these Olympics, and braved
rain and strong winds on the
fi nal night to cap their moment
in the worldwide spotlight.
While South America’s fi rst
Olympics are over, safely and
with a grandiose fi nale, many
problems remain. Still, Bra-
zil showed Sunday it still defi -
nitely knows how to party.
“These were marvelous
Olympic Games in the ‘mar-
velous city,”’ said International
Olympic Committee President
Thomas Bach, playing off the
“cidade maravilhosa” nickname
of Brazil’s postcard city of invit-
ing coastlines, year-round sun
and lush tropical vegetation.
While the stadium erupted
in applause at that declara-
tion, a few minutes later there
were boos of sadness when
Bach announced: “I declare the
Games of the XXXI Olympiad
closed.”
The closing ceremony in
iconic Maracana Stadium was
also meant to take care of some
business — formally signaling
the transition to the 2020 Sum-
mer Olympics in Japan.
But Sunday’s party was all
about Brazil, designed to be
Yu Nakajima/Kyodo News
Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe appears as the
Nintendo game character
Super Mario during the clos-
ing ceremony at the 2016
Summer Olympics in Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday.
Abe’s brief, but show-stop-
ping, appearance as Super
Mario offered a tantalizing
glimpse at Tokyo’s plans for
the 2020 games.
more low-key than the opening,
which focused heavily on Rio.
The ceremony featured
original footage of Alberto San-
tos Dumont, the man that Bra-
zilians recognize as the inven-
tor of the airplane. The theme,
“Brazilians can do with their
bare hands,” was a nod to the
emerging economy of the
world’s fi fth most populous
nation.
Dressed in colorful feathers,
dozens of dancers formed in
the shape of the arches of Lapa,
a popular area of Rio akin to
Roman ruins, then morphed to
make the shape of iconic Sug-
arloaf before quickly changing
again, this time to the offi cial
2016 symbol.
Samba legend Martinho da
Vila, whose tunes make their
way into many popular tele-
novelas, sang “Carinhoso,” or
“Affectionate.”
Olympians poured in under
light rain, waving their fl ags
while many shook their bod-
ies to samba-infused pop that
made the stadium feel like a
Carnival parade. Britain’s ath-
letes wore shoes with soles that
lit up in changing colors of red,
white and blue, while Tongan
taekwondo athlete Pita Taufa-
tofua danced onstage in a grass
skirt as a DJ performed, repris-
ing a moment that captured
attention when he carried the
fl ag for his country during the
opening ceremony.
The show widened its
lens to greater Brazil, a mas-
sive country with a land mass
slightly larger than the conti-
nental United States. There was
a tribute to cave paintings of
some of the fi rst inhabitants of
the Americas, in Serra da Capi-
vara, in Northeastern Brazil,
today one of the nation’s poor-
est regions.
Spectators watched per-
formers shake it to frevo, a fre-
netic dance that — if it’s even
possible — makes high-oc-
tane samba seem like a staid
ballroom affair. Holding small
umbrellas, dancers jumped
and marched while performing
acrobatics.
They shook it to “Vassou-
rinhas,” which means “small
brooms,” a popular song that
was also the name of a famous
club in the northeastern city of
Recife.
The show also built per-
formances around “saudade,”
which means anything from
longing for someone to sadness
to remembering good times. It
is one of the most important
words in Brazilian Portuguese.
Lights fl ashed translations
for the word in many lan-
guages, and a group of women
sang “Mulher Rendeira,” or
“Lace-making Woman,” a nod
to the country’s African heri-
tage. Brazil was the last coun-
try in the Americas to outlaw
slavery, in 1888.
Team USA takes Olympics
medal race with ease in Rio
By TIM REYNOLDS
AP Sports Writer
RIO DE JANEIRO — The
U.S. Olympic Team made
itself right at home in Rio.
The British, they had a
Games to savor as well.
The host Brazilians got
soccer gold that they craved,
the Russians struggled on
the heels of the exposure of a
state-sponsored doping pro-
gram, and the Chinese fi nished
well below expectations.
So went the medal race at the
Rio de Janeiro Olympics, where
the Americans — with women
leading the way — dominated
both the gold and overall totals.
The U.S. fi nished with 46 gold
medals and 121 medals overall,
its 51-total-medal margin over
second-place China the largest
in a non-boycotted Olympics in
nearly a century.
“This experience has been
the dream of a lifetime for
me,” said U.S. gymnast and
closing ceremony fl ag-bearer
Simone Biles, who won fi ve
medals, four of them gold, in
her fi rst Olympics.
Olympics concluded Sunday, Aug. 21
TOP 10 MEDAL
WINNERS
G
S
B Total
1.
United States
46 37 38 121
2.
China
26 18 26 70
3.
United Kingdom 27 23 17 67
4.
Russia
19 18 19 56
5.
Germany
6.
France
17 10 15 42
10 18 14 42
7.
Japan
12 8 21 41
8.
Australia
8 11 10 29
9.
Italy
8 12 8 28
Canada
4
10.
3 15 22
AP
For the fourth consecutive
games, U.S. swimmer Michael
Phelps left with more medals
than anyone else. He won six
in Rio, while Biles and U.S.
swimmer Katie Ledecky each
won fi ve to lead to lead a big
haul from American women.
U.S. women left Rio with
27 golds — by far the most
among any team of female
Olympians at these games —
and 61 medals total. U.S. track
star Allyson Felix, now a six-
time gold medalist and a win-
ner of nine medals in all, was
particularly delighted to learn
that women are bringing more
medals home to American than
the men.
“Got ’em,” Felix said,
smiling.
By now, the Americans
winning the medal race is
almost commonplace. But the
signifi cance in Rio were the
sheer amounts of hardware.
The previous record for
U.S. medals at a fully attended
Olympics was 110, set at Bei-
jing eight years ago. And the
margin between fi rst and sec-
ond in the overall medals
race this year tops all others
(the boycotted games of 1980
and 1984 excluded) since the
Americans won 67 more med-
als than Italy did at the 1932
Los Angeles Games.
“We weren’t sure we were
going to have that kind of suc-
cess coming in,” said USOC
CEO Scott Blackmun, not-
ing the track and swimming
teams had plenty of fi rst-time
Olympians.
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