Rio 2016

Rio de Janeiro, the marvelous city, will host the Olympic Games of 2016! Wow! It was a great emotion not just to us Brazilians, but to South America, since it will be the first time ever that the Olympic will be hosted in this continent.

Rio was competing with Madrid-Spain, Tokyo-Japan and Chicago-USA and those cities presented very good proposals. But as Brazilian president Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva said in his speech "The other countries made proposals. We presented a heart and a soul."

Lula, passionately proceed..."It is time to address this imbalance. The opportunity is now to extend the Games to a new continent. It's an opportunity for an Olympics in a tropical country for the first time, to feel the warmth of our people, the exuberance of our culture and the sensation of our joy." I couldn't agree more!

A great moment between Pelé and Lula,
when Rio was announced the winner city to hold the
2016 Olympic Games

As Pelé and Lula in this pic, we are enthusiast people. We don't have any fear and we are not ashamed to show our emotions, doesn't matter how formal the event is. We do have passion for our country and for our people and we truly believe that we are the best, beyond all those stereotypes the world well knows and promotes.

I couldn't hold my tears when the president of IOC, International Olympic Committee, announced that Rio was the winner. In my heart I felt it much more than an announcement. It was years of hard work from very serious people, defending an entire continent and not just a country.

What I like the most about all that is that we are not afraid to show our problems and to address them publicly. For better or for worse we know that we get enough strength, capacity and knowledge to fix them and we are working on it. Some countries prefer to ignore their internal problems while we like to point them up.
That behavior shows our weakness but also it shows our capacity of standing up for our country, not giving up easily. That makes us real.

From left to right, 1st row:
Orlando Silva-Sports Minister,
President Lula,
Carlos Nuzman-president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee and
Pelé-football legend,

Look at the faces of those men, those Brazilian authorities! What a beautiful and meaningful photo. Those mature men are celebrating a great achievement with so much joy and pleasure! All of them have the same expression. The expression of passion, of companionship, of togetherness. Oh God, I love this.
They were not in Copenhagen, Denmark, just for formalities. They were completely there, bodies and souls, singing Rio de Janeiro's best-known song "Cidade Maravilhosa" (Marvelous City). All of them got tears in their eyes. Tears we will not forget!

Rio de Janeiro

South America deserves the Olympics. Brasil deserves the Olympics and Rio de Janeiro is very proud to host the Games. See you guys in Rio in 7 years. Ops, we can't forget that the World Cup will be in Brasil. So, see you guys in 2014 and then in 2016!