The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Rio takes place today, August 6th at around 9am our time.
419 athletes across 26 sports will represent Australia at the Games. The Team comprises 263 rookies with the youngest athlete, footballer, Ellie Carpenter at 16 and Mary Hanna, equestrian, at 61, being the eldest. She is participating in her
5th Games.
The Team consists of more women (212)
than men for the first time in history.
Both the co-driver and I enjoy various parts of the competition but as is usual with most Games our time zone makes 'live' viewing a little difficult. This time we are 13 hours ahead of the host country.
Most of the day competition will be from our midnight through to the early morning. We will be able to watch the evening events, however, during breakfast.We might have to rely a lot on replays for the day sessions.
Another problem is we only have satellite TV reception via a paid provider and the local free to air commercial channel with the Olympic telecast rights is not available to us.
We can however watch their three dedicated Olympic channels via our computers and hopefully be able to Chromecast to our TV if our internet connection speed is up to it. Our ADSL link can be a bit flaky at times.
All part of the joys of rural living!
Another non technical problem is the local channel tends to be a bit nationalistic with its coverage. Sometimes you wonder if any other country other than Australia is participating. It is not always easy to get to see the world's best in action.
Hopefully all goes well for Rio. There have been considerable logistical and construction problems for city in the lead up. And we won't mention the Russian doping scandal.
We wish them luck and hope the vibe is as good as it was in Sydney for the two weeks way back in 2000.
