RIO DE JANEIRO: A blustery storm, a touch of melancholy and a sense of pride converged at the closing ceremony of the 2016 Olympics on Sunday as Brazil breathed a collective sigh of relief at having pulled off South America’s first Games.

After a gruelling 17 days, Rio de Janeiro cast aside early struggles with empty venues, security scares and a mysterious green diving pool to throw a huge Carnival-like party.

Samba dancers, singers, drummers and a giant plumed macaw float mixed with hundreds of athletes in the storied Maracana stadium while a final volley of fireworks lit up the night sky.

Brazilians came to the closing ceremony happy, many wearing the canary yellow jersey of the nation’s sports teams, having won two late gold medals in their two favourite sports, men’s football and volleyball.

But Sunday served up tough weather conditions for such a big party. High winds buffeted the Maracana, power briefly went out in the upper part of the stadium, and rain drenched performers and athletes as they entered the ceremony, many with medals hanging around their necks.

Still, Brazil showed it still definitely knows how to party.

“These were marvellous Olympic Games in the ‘marvellous city’,” said International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, playing off the “cidade maravilhosa” nickname of Brazil’s postcard city of inviting coastlines, year-round sun and lush tropical vegetation.

In the last of 306 medal ceremonies, Bach draped the gold around the neck of Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge, winner of the men’s marathon earlier in the day.

After a rollercoaster fortnight which mixed off-field hitches with compelling sporting drama, Bach declared the Rio Games closed and expressed hope that they had left a lasting mark on the metropolitan area of 12 million people.

“These Olympic Games are leaving a unique legacy for generations to come,” he said. “History will talk about a Rio de Janeiro before and a much better Rio de Janeiro after the Olympic Games.”

In a final symbolic act, the Olympic flame that had burned since Aug 5 was then extinguished in a downpour of artificial rain.

The city handed over the Olympic flag to Tokyo, site of the 2020 Summer Games, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared in the stadium dressed as popular video game character Mario, tunnelling from Tokyo to Rio.

“The Japanese government will... work hard so it will be the best Olympics ever,” Abe said as he met Japanese medal-winners earlier.

But Sunday’s party was all about Brazil, designed to be more low-key than the opening, which focused heavily on Rio.

The ceremony featured original footage of Alberto Santos Dumont, the man that Brazilians recognise as the inventor of the airplane.

The theme, “Brazilians can do with their bare hands,” was a nod to the emerging economy of the world’s fifth most populous nation.

Dressed in colourful feathers, dozens of dancers formed in the shape of the arches of Lapa, a popular area of Rio akin to Roman ruins, then morphed to make the shape of iconic Sugarloaf before quickly changing again, this time to the official 2016 symbol.

Samba legend Martinho da Vila, whose tunes make their way into many popular telenovelas, sang “Carinhoso,” or “Affectionate”.

The show widened its lens to greater Brazil, a massive country with a land mass slightly larger than the continental United States.

There was a tribute to cave paintings of some of the first inhabitants of the Americas, in Serra da Capivara, in Northeastern Brazil, today one of the nation’s poorest regions.

Spectators watched performers shake it to frevo, a frenetic dance that — if it’s even possible — makes high-octane samba seem like a staid ballroom affair. Holding small umbrellas, dancers jumped and marched while performing acrobatics.

They shook it to “Vassourinhas,” which means “small brooms,” a popular song that was also the name of a famous club in the northeastern city of Recife.

The show also built performances around “saudade,” which means anything from longing for someone to sadness to remembering good times. It is one of the most important words in Brazilian Portuguese.

Lights flashed translations for the word in many languages, and a group of women sang “Mulher Rendeira,” or “Lace-making Woman,” a nod to the country’s African heritage. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to outlaw slavery, in 1888.

The Games had many memorable moments, both for Brazilian competitors at home and athletes from around the world with the heroics of Olympics legends Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps.

As Brazil shrugs off a post-Olympic hangover to face a deepening political and economic crisis, memories of Jamaican Bolt and Phelps will linger after they set the 2016 Olympics alight.

Swimming legend Phelps, Bolt, and an array of others helped the Games rise above the taint of scandal following the exposure of state-sponsored doping in Russia.

With the games over, Brazilians now return to problems that have long consumed the country of 200 million people.

The economy is mired in its worst recession in decades, and later this week the Senate is expected to begin the trial on whether to permanently remove suspended President Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached in May for breaking fiscal rules in her managing of the federal budget.

But on Sunday, one strong sentiment was relief — that despite some problems, overall the Games went well.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2016