Release date: 23/08/2010 |
Brazil's second city Rio de Janeiro, sits between the Atlantic Ocean and the rainforest, perched between a series of granite hills which give rise to some spectacular views. A bit like Monaco, the city's rise to prominence only arose when a tunnel was built between the encircling hills and the rest of the country. But now the wide golden sands of the beaches at Ipanema and Copacabana are legendary as are some of the hotels fronting it. The Global Champions Tour was visiting Rio for the first time after a combination of circumstances necessitated a change from the previous San Paulo venue and the city, perhaps better known for its carnival, made every effort to make this addition to its sporting heritage a memorable one.
Brazil is a great sporting nation and Rio de Janeiro has been awarded the 2016 Olympic Games, the first time the Olympiad has been held in the continent. Brazil is also home of the great Pessoa family, who have been at the forefront of modern show-jumping for over fifty years. But although Rio hosted the Pan American Games recently, winning team gold in show jumping, and they have provided the world with several world class F1 drivers, perhaps it is another activity that they are most renowned for. Football is inescapable in any part of Brazil, and Rio is no exception. In 2014 the city will host part of the FIFA World Cup Final. Beach football is a common sight but the biggest team in the city, Flamenca, play in the worlds biggest stadium, the Maracana, which can hold 160'000 people at one time. Shared by two other lesser teams, games are played there at least twice a week and cost only a few dollars to attend. There is little that can prepare the uninitiated for the sheer volume of sound that rolls and swells to a crescendo if the home side scores. This is a place where you will hear the basic samba rhythms being drummed out at high volume by adoring fans to inspire their team to provide that little bit of Brazilian magic as displayed by the likes of Pele and Ronaldinio.
Rio does many things on a large scale. The huge statue of the Christos , one of the wonders of the modern world, dominates the skyline. The harbour is another spectacle worth seeing, capable of berthing the great liners of the past. The Botanical Gardens with its avenues of towering palms has one of the planets premier collections of rare orchids. For the Carnival, the world biggest permanent parade ground makes sure both revellers and tourists get to see each gloriously decorated float to maximum advantage. In 2007, Rio provided another glittering landmark, this one quite literally. When Angelina Jolie needed a necklace for the Oscar Ceremony in Hollywood, Rio company H Stern provided one that even by Tinseltown standards was magnificent and is still talked about. Worth a staggering 10 MILLION dollars, if South American jewellery had not been noticed before, this was a wondrous arrival on the international stage, and reminded the world of something that is often forgotten.
Brazilian emeralds are famed for their verdant colour, so closely resembling the vivid greens of the rainforest visible Rio windows but the southern hemisphere country also supplies large numbers of the worlds other great gemstones and H Stern craft them, at their Rio headquarters, into fantastic and beautiful pieces of jewellery. Imperial topaz, for example, is only found in Brazil and comes in shades that vary from an almost chocolate brown through orange to straw yellow and the first choice of these stones goes to H Stern. Founded as a small gem trading company in 1945 by Hans Stern who had arrived in Rio aged 17, it is still run by the family today. Many of the staff have been been there all their working lives, and watched at the company grew from that first small office to the huge tower block containing the workshops and gem laboratory which lies a few minutes behind Ipanema Beach and provides some of the worlds most sought after gems beautifully set and adorning the necks, wrists and fingers of the elite.
