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| The Olympic flag was greeted with cheers and applause in Rio de Janeiro |
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The
official flag of the Olympics has arrived in the Brazilian city of Rio de
Janeiro, the host city of the next Games.
Rio Mayor
Eduardo Paes waved the flag after stepping off the plane with other officials
and Brazilian athletes who competed in London.
The flag
was handed to Mr Paes on Sunday in London before the flame at the Olympic
Stadium was extinguished.
The move
marks the official start of Rio's preparations for the 2016 Games.
Arriving on
Monday with the flag, Mr Paes was accompanied by Carlos Arthur Nuzman,
president of the 2016 Games Organising Committee, Rio Governor Sergio Cabral,
and the country's team of athletes.
Brazil
finished 22nd in London 2012, winning 17 medals, two more than its previous
best in Beijing.
Rio will be
the first South American city to host the Olympics. The city has yet to
construct the Olympic Park and other venues, and many have expressed concern
about how much work there is to do ahead of the event.
During a
visit in June, members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said that
timelines were "already very tight" and that "the amount of work
to be completed is considerable".
The BBC's
Quentin Sommerville in Rio says that worries about Olympic readiness are not
new, but that not since Athens have there been so many questions about a host's
ability to stage the Olympics.
The
transport system in Rio already struggles to serve its six million people, he
says.
But Mr Paes
has promised to transform the city's infrastructure, and the government says
all of the Olympic venues will be finished a year before the Games start.
Our
correspondent says they will be helped by the fact that they have something of a
dress rehearsal, when the World Cup arrives in Brazil in 2014.
As the
delegation touched down, a group of demonstrators was gathered outside the
airport in Rio to protest against planned evictions connected to the Olympics
planning, according to the Associated Press.
The London
Olympics were brought to a close on Sunday night with a spectacular musical
ceremony, featuring some of the biggest names of British pop, including the
Spice Girls, George Michael and Elbow.
In a
separate development on Monday, a female athlete from Belarus was stripped of
her gold medal in the London Olympics after failing two drugs tests.
The shot
putter, Nadzeya Ostapchuk, was the first athlete to lose a medal in the 2012
Games due to doping.
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The party is over! 6,000 athletes and 16,000 spectators make their way home after London 2012 as Team GB rowers emerge bleary-eyed
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