Rio Games an acid test for Olympics' appeal in a grim world
Through no fault of their own, the athletes who will march in massed, joyful ranks behind their nations' flags in Friday night's opening ceremony for the first Olympic Games in South America shoulder expectations beyond their own ambitions for gold, silver, bronze and personal bests.
[...] no feat of theirs, or the other 10,500 Olympians, between the first medal awards on Saturday and the Aug. 21 closing ceremony will paste over recent horrors of 84 people murdered with a truck in Nice or the shooting massacre of 49 people in a Florida nightclub.
On Friday, at the opening gala of these Olympics at Rio's Maracana Stadium, 10 refugee athletes will march as one team behind the white Olympic flag — a reminder to the world that they aren't solely defined by their lack of a place to call home.
Doping scandals — from sprinter Ben Johnson losing his 1988 Olympic gold medal over steroids to Russia's recent state-organized subversion of anti-doping efforts — have stained all Olympians and heightened cynicism of their feats and worth.
Rio's alarming murder rate and turf wars between drug lords and police weren't so high on the globe's agenda before athletes and hundreds of thousands of Olympic visitors discovered that the prospect of being in harm's way has long been the darker flipside of Brazilian Samba, carnival and caipirinha cocktails.
Pope Francis told pilgrims on Wednesday at his weekly audience at the Vatican that in a world "thirsty for peace, tolerance and reconciliation," he hopes the games can inspire everyone to pursue a prize that is "not a medal but something more precious — achieving a civilization in which solidarity reigns, founded on the recognition that we are all members of one human family."
"[...] people are beginning to feel the Olympic spirit," said Ilene Pessoa, a college administrator who lives in Rio's Copacabana neighborhood.