tech, cheeky inventiveness of London

RIO DE JANEIRO -- After controversy almost kept the United States womens 4x100-meter relay team out of Fridays final, the group instead was able to defend its Olympic title.The team of Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix, English Gardner and Tori Bowie finished first to win the gold medal, followed by Jamaica and Great Britain.The gold is Felixs fifth, the most of any U.S. female track star in history.The Americans, who needed to set a qualifying time in a solo rerun hours after dropping the baton in Thursdays preliminaries and getting a second chance on protest, won the final in 41.01 seconds.The Jamaican team that featured Elain Thompson?and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was second in 41.36. Britain won bronze in a national-record 41.77.As so often, Felixs celebrations were mostly muted, but her smile told it all. She had been through injury, the inability to defend her 200-meter title because she didnt qualify at the U.S. trials and a near disqualification in the relay heats.Adversity sometimes makes you stronger, she said. Weve each had a rocky road to get here, and we came together to win the gold.It was an impressive comeback after near disaster on Thursday, when Felix dropped the baton after being bumped by a Brazilian runner. That led to the rerun, and the Americans qualified fastest, taking the place of China in the final.The drawback was they were given the worst lane of all, Lane 1, which has the tightest corners and usually impedes top speed.It didnt bother them.Felix ran the second leg for the Americans, the same section as 100- and 200-meter gold medalist Thompson, and passed to Gardner, who ran a powerful curve to give her team the lead.Bowie ran the anchor leg and held off Fraser-Pryce as the Americans only narrowly missed the world record.Bartoletta was already waiting for Bowie for a wild embrace and to celebrate the second-fastest time in history behind the world record that Felix & Co. set in winning gold at the London Games.?For Bartoletta, it was her second gold in Rio, after she also won the long jump.Felix entered the Games as one of just six women to have won four golds in track and field. At the same time, silver for Jamaica allowed Veronica Campbell-Brown to win a medal at a fifth Olympics dating back to the 2000 Sydney Games.Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.Frank Clark Jersey . Olli Jokinen, Mark Scheifele, and Bryan Little each had a goal and an assist as Winnipeg won 5-2, handing Calgary its record-setting seventh consecutive loss on home ice. Khalen Saunders Womens Jersey . Miller finished in two minutes, 6.09 seconds, one day before the first medal race on the Alpine schedule. The 36-year-old American also turned in the top time in Thursdays opening training session. http://www.prochiefsauthentic.com/Youth-Travis-Kelce-Elite-Jersey/ . Durant finished with 24 points and 13 rebounds, Jackson matched his career high with 23 points on 10-of-14 shooting and Lamb scored 12 points on 5-of-7 shooting, lifting the Thunder to a 94-88 win over San Antonio and snapping the Spurs 11-game winning streak. 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Louis Blues teammates who would also be participating in the Olympics, Alex Pietrangelo felt right at home, no different in some ways to the travel experience of any old road trip – save for the length of the journey, that is.RIO DE JANEIRO -- What it lacked in flash, Rio made up for with feeling.With a limited budget, the consequence of a biting recession that roiled preparations for South Americas first Olympics, Brazil laced its high-energy opening party for the games of the 31st Olympiad with a sobering message of the dangers of global warming.Graphic projections of world cities being swamped by rising seas set Rio de Janeiros otherwise fun and festive gala apart from the more self-congratulatory and lavish celebrations that Beijing and London wowed with in 2008 and 2012.The heat is melting the icecap, a voice intoned in the Maracana Stadium. Its disappearing very quickly.But it wasnt all doom and gloom. After all, nowhere parties quite like Rio.Supermodel Gisele Bundchen shimmered to the tune of The Girl from Ipanema. Fireworks formed the word Rio in the skies. The colossal Christ the Redeemer statue was bathed in Brazilian yellow and green. Dancers, all hips and wobble, grooved to thumping funk and sultry samba.After one of the roughest-ever rides from vote to games by an Olympic host, the city of beaches, carnival, grinding poverty and sun-kissed wealth celebrated Brazils can-do spirit, biodiversity and melting pot history.The crowd roared when Bundchen sashayed from one side of the 78,000-seat arena to the other, as Tom Jobims grandson, Daniel, played his grandfathers famous song about the Ipanema girl tall and tan and young and lovely.In a video preceding the show, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the games celebrate the best of humanity and appealed for an Olympic truce, calling on all warring parties to lay down their weapons during the two weeks of sporting achievement.There were times after the International Olympic Committee selected Rio ahead of Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid in 2009 when it seemed that the city of 6.5 million people might not get its act together for the worlds greatest sporting mega-event. The spreading health crisis of the mosquito-born Zika virus kept some athletes away. Promises to clean up Rios filthy waters remained unfulfilled. The heavy bill for the games, at least $12 billion, made them unpopular with many. Heavily armed security stopped a small group of protesters from getting close to the stadium ahead of the ceremony.But with more than a dash of gambiarra, the Brazilian art of quick-fixes and making do, Rio is ready.Just.Our admiration is even greater because you managed this at a very difficult time in Brazilian history. We have always believed in you, IOC President Thomas Bach said.The honor of officially declaring the games open fell to Michel Temer, Brazils unpopular interim president, who was loudly jeered and faced shouts of out with Temer. He was standing in for suspended President Dilma Rousseff. Her ouster less than four months ahead of the games for alleged budget violations was one of many spanners in the works of Brazils Olympic preparations and impacted the opening ceremony itselff.dddddddddddd Fewer than 25 foreign heads of state were listed as attending, with others seemingly staying away to avoid giving the impression of taking sides amid Brazils leadership uncertainty.The cannonball-shaped cauldron was lit by Brazilian marathoner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima. At the 2004 games, an Irish spectator wearing a kilt, knee-socks and a beret tackled de Lima while he was leading the Olympic marathon. Instead of gold, he fell back to take bronze.Another cauldron was lit in the citys port area early Saturday that will be displayed for Rio residents to enjoy.Greece, the historical and spiritual home of the games, led the march by athletes into the stadium. They were joined by a first-ever Refugee Olympic Team of 10 athletes, displaced from Syria, South Sudan, Congo and Ethiopia. Their flag-bearer, Rose Nathike Lokonyen, fled war in South Sudan and ran her first race in a refugee camp in northern Kenya. Only Brazils team, which marched last, drew a louder roar from the crowd than the refugees.The athletes were given tree seeds, plus cartridges of soil. When the seeds sprout, they will be planted in a Rio park.With USA emblazoned on the back of his jacket, Michael Phelps carried the flag for the U.S. team, the largest with 549 competitors. At his fifth and last Olympics, it was the first time the record holder of 22 medals had marched in an opening ceremony, having skipped previous ones to save energy for competition.On behalf of all 11,288 competitors (6,182 men; 5,106 women), Brazilian two-time Olympic champion sailor Robert Scheidt pledged that they wont take banned drugs -- an oath likely to ring false to fans after the scandal of government-orchestrated cheating in Russia. As a consequence, Russias team was whittled down from a hoped-for 389 athletes to around 270.Iran picked a woman, archer Zahra Nemati, as flag-bearer for its team made up overwhelmingly of men. Another woman pushed Nematis wheelchair. She was paralyzed in a car accident as a teenager.Shoals of samba dancers flowed in a rainbow of colors, but many showed less flesh than normal for Brazil, seemingly mindful of their global TV audience.After the grandeur of Beijings opening ceremony and the high-tech, cheeky inventiveness of Londons, Rios was earthier and less swish but more sobering with its gloomy environmental look at the future and deliberate penny-pinching. Creative director Fernando Meirelles said their budget, slashed by half as Brazils economic recession bit ever harder, is 12 times less than London, 20 times less than Beijing.It is pretty tacky to be overspending, he said. It is not a good message for the world. When 40 percent of the homes in Brazil have no sanitation, you cant really be spending a billion reals for a show.In the end I feel good that I am not spending money that Brazil hasnt got. ' ' '