COPENHAGEN - HEADS of state don't often break down and cry in public - unless of course they are celebrating capturing the Olympic Games for your city and country and continent for the very first time.
Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva shed tears of joy after a tense day in Copenhagen on Friday ended with Rio de Janeiro pulling off a landslide win in the vote to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
Mr Lula, whose charisma and guidance was instrumental in Rio's stunning victory over Madrid, Tokyo and above all Chicago, described the occasion as 'the most emotional day of my life'. 'I'm 63 and have seen many thinigs in my life and thought I could never get emotional but suddenly I'm crying more than any other person here,' he said.
IOC president Jacques Rogge said it had been the extra dimension of giving the Games to South America for the first time that had swayed IOC members. Mr Lula acknowledged that point saying: 'If Chicago had won, it would have been the fifth time the United States had staged the Games, Spain the second time and Japan the second time - for us it is the first time.
'I have a message to my close friend, the Prime Minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, to Barack Obama for whom I have high hopes, he's a great fellow, and to the Prime Minister of Japan who I don't know because it's like that in Japan - you say 'good morning to one Prime Minister and 'good afternoon' to a different one!'
'I say to them all I'm sorry that I am happy and you are sad but you all have been happy many times and we have been sad.' Mr Lula recounted something members of the bid team had said to him earlier on Friday. 'You have to understand we come from a country that was colonised and so we have a habit of thinking small with the feeling that we didn't matter.'
'So when Danish television had all these images of Obama arriving at Copenhagen airport this morning people said to me 'oh, he's arrived, we're going to lose'.
'Obama had told me at the G-8 summit that he wasn't going to come here but leave Michelle his wife to do it telling me she would do a far better job. I told him 'if you don't go to Copenhagen I'll win'. Then he turns up but God wished it that we still won!'
Mr Lula added that despite his joy he was a also little concerned. 'Why? Because the IOC has substantially increased our responsibility.'
'I'm not afraid of responsibility, I feel that every day human beings should wake up and face a new challenge.
'I won't be President anymore in 2016 so it's the Brazilian people who will have this responsibility, now it's up to the Brazilian state to get on with organising the Games.' -- AFP
