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A Games volunteer and fan of the Olympic Rings in the Barra Olympic park.
A Games volunteer and fan of the Olympic Rings in the Barra Olympic park. Photograph: Barbara Walton/EPA
A Games volunteer and fan of the Olympic Rings in the Barra Olympic park. Photograph: Barbara Walton/EPA

Olympics 2016 daily briefing: Rio gets set for 'analogue' opening ceremony

This article is more than 7 years old

Official start will be ‘cool’ on a budget, say organisers. Plus men’s football begins with goalless draw for Brazil, and Russia is (mostly) back in the Games

Welcome to what is officially, if slightly end-of-the-world-ishly, known as Day Zero of the Rio Games, and another of our daily briefings: everything you need to know before you plant yourself in front of the TV for (checks today’s schedules) the archery and, of course, the opening ceremony.

That ceremony will be live blogged by the Guardian team; find it here later.

The big picture

At least 70% of the Russian team will compete, we now know, as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) agreed that 271 of the original 389 could pull on their tracksuits after all. Despite revelations of state-sponsored doping and calls for a ban on all Russian competitors, reports Owen Gibson:

Amid a farcical process, most federations waved the majority of their competitors through with only athletics, rowing, weightlifting and canoeing taking a stronger stance.

The track and field team remains barred. But the IOC decision to also block previously banned athletes has been scuppered by the court of arbitration for sport, which late on Thursday night said the double jeopardy rule “does not respect the athletes’ right of natural justice”. That could see rowers Anastasia Karabelshivo and Ivan Podshivalov, swimmer Yulia Efimova and up to nine others back in the Games. Possibly. Perhaps we’ll just have to wait and see who turns up.

Russia’s Olympic committee president Alexander Zhukov with a giant matryoshka doll, who will not be competing in the Games. Photograph: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images

In any case, what’s to worry about, asks Alexander Zhukov, the head of Russia’s Olympic committee:

As of today, I think there is no other team that is so clean and so carefully controlled than the Russian one.

Add your own emoji shrug.

Careful control required for this story too, in which – depending on which version of events you opt for – a Russian diplomat shot and killed an armed carjacker close to the Olympic park; OR someone pretending to be a Russian diplomat shot and killed an armed carjacker close to the Olympic park.

Shrouded in a whole different kind of mystery is Friday night’s opening ceremony. So what do we know? It will, according to organisers, be “cool” and “analogue”, full of “makeshift improvising”, “pure creativity” and, um, “being MacGyver”. Which translates to presentations on the environment, nods to Brexit and Donald Trump, and Judi Dench reading a poem with Brazilian actor Fernanda Montenegro. Before you scoff, ponder how enticing flying Mary Poppinses, the Archers theme tune and Tim Berners-Lee sending a tweet would have sounded before Danny Boyle showed us in 2012.

As for who might light the cauldron, Pelé remains the much-mooted choice – although everything from hip surgery-related muscle pain to sponsorship obligations have been cited as a reason why he might miss out.

There has also been some sport. I know! Remember that part? Thursday had the opening batch of the men’s football. Hosts, favourites and general candidates for deification Brazil somehow managed a 0-0 draw with South Africa, who were missing a man with Mothobi Mvala sent off. Mind you, Gabriel Jésus missed this, so fair’s fair:

Those results in full:

  • Iraq 0-0 Denmark
  • Honduras 3-2 Algeria
  • Brazil 0-0 South Africa
  • Mexico 2-2 Germany
  • Portugal 2-0 Argentina
  • Sweden 2-2 Colombia
  • Fiji 0-8 South Korea (ouch)
  • Nigeria 5-4 Japan

You should also know:

Picture of the day

Simone Biles practises on the vault during a training session at the Olympic arena. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Read why high-flying US gymnast Simone Biles is tipped for the all-around gymnastics gold here.

Diary

All times are Rio times: add four hours for UK, add 13 hours for eastern Australia; subtract one hour for east-coast US and four for west coast. If that doesn’t cover you, apologies and here is google.

  • At 9am, it’s archery, with the men’s team and individual ranking rounds.
  • Followed at 1pm by more archery, with the women’s team and individual ranking rounds.
  • Then it’s fireworks from 8pm-10pm for the opening ceremony.
A rehearsal at the Maracanã stadium. Warning: contains spoilers. Photograph: Buda Mendes/Getty Images

Team GB roundup

UK sports minister Tracey Crouch has thrown down the traditional gauntlet (none of those modern gauntlets here) to her Australian counterpart, Sussan Ley, betting that Team GB will top their antipodean rivals for the third Games in a row. Ley’s predecessors, having lost the challenge in the last two outings, served forfeits of wearing Team GB colours at the Beijing Paralympics in 2008, and rowing the Olympic course in a Team GB kit in 2012. (It was 1km, that’s actually quite impressive.)

Crouch told reporters:

I am extremely competitive and whatever they bet me I will win.

We could crowdsource the forfeits, but Boaty McBoatface proves we cannot be trusted with such important decision-making.

Team GB has a target of 48 medals in Rio, the largest haul ever for a Games away from home (London 2012’s 65 being the unrepeatable acme). Here’s how the Guardian’s sports writers think the team will fare, sport by sport.

Team USA roundup

You might wonder if the American team were eager to escape to Rio from the hurly-burly of US politics. But here’s three-time Olympic champion shooter Kim Rhode talking about gun control. (She’s not keen.) Fresh laws in her home state of California requiring background checks to buy ammunition were, Rhode said, “very, very challenging for me”. Plus, in bad news for those in the centre of the adopted child-gun enthusiast Venn diagram:

If I were to purchase a gun, I cannot loan that gun to someone who is not a blood relative, so that means that I can’t loan it to my husband or I can’t loan it to an adopted child.

Kim Rhode handing her gun to a blood relative. Photograph: Jae C. Hong/AP

The US basketball teams are staying away from the action (and the not quite visitor-ready athletes’ village) in their own luxury cruise ship, the Silver Cloud, despite star player Jimmy Butler’s apparent fear of water – and not for the reasons other Rio competitors are nervous of it. Still, at least staying on a cruise ship guarantees they won’t fall prey to any nasty stomach bugs, right?

Australia team roundup

More trouble in the water, as the Australian swim team was forced out of the warm-up pool when it turned cloudy and “soupy”. Extensive journalistic investigations have so far failed to reveal whether it was a creamy pumpkin consistency or more of a consommé, but head coach Michael Bohl was not happy:

That pool looked really cloudy. Rather than risk getting eye or ear or nose infections or anything we just thought we’d move them … It was very soupy looking.

Stock photo: Australian swimmer Georgia Bohl in action. Photograph: Dave Hunt/EPA

China’s swim coach Xu Qi isn’t too cheerful either, bashing claims that gold-medallist freestyler Sun Yang had been deliberately splashing Australian rival Mack Horton as “fake news”. No word on Sun’s views on other pool etiquette basics such as running on the wet tiles or dive-bombing.

Most of the team won’t turn out for the opening ceremony, with more than 300 of the 421 athletes saving their promenading energies for competition. Well, that and not having to wear the uniforms.

Underdog of the day

Spare a thought for the University of Georgia. Since days of Twitter yore, its students have created institutional solidarity through the use of the #UGA hashtag. But now that hashtag belongs to Uganda. For the duration of the Games, appending #UGA will add a natty little Ugandan flag to tweets. But don’t worry UGA folk, you’ll get it back before the start of the college football season. Oh, unless Twitter keeps it for the Paralympics. So after that. Be strong.

Tweet of the day

Absolutely not a sign of things to come.

What a start! #Rio2016 kicking off with lost key and firemen forcing open lock to east gate of Olympic stadium #oops pic.twitter.com/7yj0moF9Ms

— Julia Carneiro (@juliadcarneiro) August 3, 2016

If today were a movie

It would be Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. But as long as someone remembers the keys to the stadium, cleans out the soupy pool and lets Kim Rhode have her bullets, all should be well.

And another thing

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