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You don’t need to have been in the city for very long to realise that the people of Rio de Janeiro – who are known in Brazil as cariocas – are passionate about sport and physical activity.Around the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, one of the city’s many picture-postcard locations, cariocas of all ages run and cycle daily on a 7.5km path surrounded by stunning scenery. In Tijuca Forest – the largest man-made urban forest in the world – young people go mountain biking on natural trails. Along the coast, from Leme to Pontal, the sandy beaches are packed with sports enthusiasts playing beach volleyball and “footvolley” – a hybrid sport invented on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro – while men and women show off their incredible balletic skills in a game called altinho, in which they use every part of their bodies apart from their hands to keep the ball in the air.It is a similar story throughout Brazil – a country that has sport in its DNA thanks to the exploits of legendary figures such as football icon Pelé, seven-time Grand Slam tennis champion Maria Bueno, basketball stars Oscar Schmidt and Hortência Marcari, and motorsport heroes Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna.Given the country’s sporting heritage, it is not hard to imagine just how eagerly its residents are awaiting the 2016 Olympic Games – the first to be held in South America – which will begin with a spectacular Opening Ceremony on 5 August next year. Many cariocas are already counting down the hours until they welcome the 10,500 athletes from more than 200 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) for what promises to be an unforgettable festival of sport in a country famous for its annual Carnival. “As each day passes, the Rio 2016 Games are increasingly present in the daily lives of cariocas and people throughout Brazil,” explains Mario Andrada, Rio 2016’s Executive Director of Communications. “The Brazilian people are greeting the Games with enthusiasm and excitement.”Indeed, it seems the country has already been gripped by Olympic fever, with more than 240,000 people registering to become Games volunteers, almost 700,000 students participating in the Rio 2016 Education Programme and over 320,000 people voting to name the official Games mascots. An extensive calendar of test events – which began in July – and the start of the and LeBron James up close, as well as the chance to experience the excitement of the Olympic venues, which are located across four districts of Rio de Janeiro – Barra, Copacabana, Maracanã and Deodoro. Five other Brazilian cities – Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, Manaus, Salvador and São Paulo – will also host Olympic football matches.Barr The majority of Olympic venues will be located in Barra da Tijuca, a neighbourhood in the west of Rio de Janeiro and one of the fastest growing areas of the city. Occupying a 1.18 million square-metre area, which was previously home to the race circuit that staged the Brazilian Formula 1 Grand Prix in the 1980s, the Barra Olympic Park will host 16 different Olympic sports and contain five arenas, two aquatics facilities, a tennis centre, a velodrome and the Olympic Village. Two venues – the AboveThe Olympic torch looks down on Rio from the Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountainnationwide Olympic torch relay in May next year will also give even more Brazilians the chance to enjoy the Olympic experience.The passion that the country has for the upcoming Games was made even more apparent during the initial round of Olympic ticket sales in June, when nearly 1.6 million tickets were sold. Cariocas and other Brazilians are evidently already buzzing about the possibility of seeing the likes of Usain Bolt, Serena Williams, Roger Federer ‘BRAZILIAN PEOPLE ARE GREETING THE GAMES WITH ENTHUSIASM AND EXCITEMENT’MARIO ANDRADA, RIO 2016 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONSOn yea  go32 OLYMPIC REVIEW