Vanderlei de Lima lights cauldron to start Rio Games
The Olympic torch is now lit, and the hand of Vanderlei de Lima, denied an Olympic gold 12 years ago, did the lighting.
Over 95 days, 12,000 people carried the flame from ancient Greece to Rio, and the flame reached the stadium shortly before midnight local time. Gustavo Kuerten, the former No. 1-ranked tennis player in the world, brought the flame into the stadium, then passed the flame to former basketball star Hortencia Marcari. She passed the torch to Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, who had been on pace to win a gold medal in the marathon at the 2004 Athens Games when he was tackled by a spectator. He was unable to recover, and ended with a bronze. His sportsmanship won him praise then, and it earned him the honor of lighting the Olympic torch Friday.
Every Olympic Opening Ceremony, all of the hours and hours of pageantry and parading, leads inexorably onward to the climactic moment when the torch is lit and the Games officially begin. The honor of lighting the torch goes to a notable figure in the host country’s athletic history, and in recent Olympics has become something of a guessing game.
The lighting of the torch can be transcendent, as it was with Muhammad Ali in Atlanta in 1996, or it can be a misfire, as when one of Canada’s four torches failed to rise in Vancouver in 2010. Either way, it’s the first signature moment of the Olympic Games.
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For as long as Rio claimed the 2016 Games, popular opinion held that soccer legend Pele would win the honor of lighting the torch. Pele may well be the world’s best-known living athlete, and he was such a clear favorite that oddsmakers weren’t even offering odds on the possibility of any other choice.
But hours before the Opening Ceremony, Pele announced that health issues would keep him from being present at Maracana Stadium to light the torch. There were also questions about whether sponsorship obligations might keep him away from the ceremony.
The names of Kuerten and de Lima emerged as possible alternates shortly after Pele’s announcement.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
