One year to go: Rio school children celebrate by performing Olympic parade
About 800 students from 130 public schools take part in event at park with London 2012 Olympic rings
School children from across the city came together to celebrate the nearing Games (Rio 2016/Daniel Ramalho)
On 5 August 2016 more than 10,000 of the world’s best athletes will take part in the Athletes’ Parade, a traditional part of the Olympic Games opening ceremony, at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio. And with excitement sweeping the city now there is less than one year to go, school children mounted their own Olympic parade on Friday (7 August) at Madureira Park in the north of the city, where a giant set of Olympic rings from the London 2012 Games are hung.
About 800 kids from 130 public schools took part in the event that was a colourful, noisy and mobile lesson in Olympic and Paralympic Games history, celebrating the different sports, the movements’ leading icons and previous host cities.
Yasmin Rosa made a replica of the Rio 2016 Olympic torch (Photo: Rio 2016/Felipe Cavalca)
The parade began with the Rio municipal guard carrying in the Olympic Flag, as happens in the real parade. To the sound of a Brazilian marching band, the first students appeared with flags of European countries who had previously hosted the Games, some dressed in the traditional clothes of those nations.
Symbols of the Olympic Movement, like a figure of Baron Pierre de Coubertin – the father of the modern Games – and the Olympic torch, were also paraded. Students from the Rio 2016 education programme, Transforma, also took part, with costumes and props representing the Olympic values – excellence, friendship and respect – and the Paralympics values – courage, determination, inspiration and equality.
Homage was paid to each of the previous Olympic host cities (Photo: Rio 2016/Daniel Ramalho)
Pupils from schools for youngsters with a disability also took part in the parade, which ended with Olympic Games mascot Vinicius entertaining the kids with his new dance.
