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RIO DE JANEIRO -- Even if only for two weeks, can Faster-Higher-Stronger overpower deadlier, scarier and bloodier? Can the Olympic Games still offer the world momentary levity, distract from terror, shootings, poverty and other worries in globally grim times? If not, what use is the multibillion-dollar celebration of youthful endeavor and mostly niche sports?Through no fault of their own, the athletes who will march in massed, joyful ranks behind their nations flags in Friday nights opening ceremony for the first Olympic Games in South America shoulder expectations beyond their own ambitions for gold, silver, bronze and personal bests.No Olympics in recent memory has opened under so many dark clouds, both within recession-battered Brazil and beyond. Headliners Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are back for more medals. But no feat of theirs, or the other 10,500 Olympians, between the first medal awards on Saturday and the Aug. 21 closing ceremony will paste over recent horrors of 84 people murdered with a truck in Nice or the shooting massacre of 49 people in a Florida nightclub. Sports are, and always will be, trivial compared to such atrocities that have come depressingly thick and fast of late.The Olympics may help me take my mind off things, said Parisian lawyer Remy Durand, reflecting over lunch Thursday on the Champs-Elysees. But its not going to change my overall mood lastingly, after the attacks in recent weeks and months in France.Yet Olympic organizers cant be faulted for trying, with their Together we can change the world slogan and OlympicPeace hashtag. Cold War boycotts aside, the games remain a symbol of global togetherness, even if an increasingly commercialized one. By putting religion and politics aside, the Olympics still can remind the worlds people of their shared humanity, not their divisions.Picture Berlin in 1936, when white German long jumper Luz Long bonded with black American Jesse Owens when Adolf Hitler wanted to peddle racial supremacy. Or Sydney in 2000, when athletes from North and South Korea walked together behind one flag in the opening ceremony, momentarily putting aside more than half a century of enmity. Or Barcelona in 1992, when white South African Elana Meyer ran over to plant a kiss on Ethiopias Derartu Tulu. Meyer had won silver to Tulus gold in the 10,000 meters to become her countrys first post-apartheid individual medalist.On Friday, at the opening gala of these Olympics at Rios Maracana Stadium, 10 refugee athletes will march as one team behind the white Olympic flag -- a reminder to the world that they arent solely defined by their lack of a place to call home. While not as grand as opening ceremonies past, Rio still expects to wow.The Athens ceremony was classic, and Beijing was grand, was musical. London was quite smart. Were going to be cool, said creative director Fernando Meirelles.Still, the games have their naysayers. Doping scandals -- from sprinter Ben Johnson losing his 1988 Olympic gold medal over steroids to Russias recent state-organized subversion of anti-doping efforts -- have stained all Olympians and heightened cynicism of their feats and worth.On behalf of all of this summers competitors, a Brazilian athlete will pledge at the opening ceremony that they will compete without doping and without drugs, in the true spirit of sportsmanship. The same promise has been made at all games since 2000 but may ring false among fans, especially with Russias flag fluttering among the others; the International Olympic Committee rejected calls for a blanket ban on all Russian athletes. The IOC, as it has in the past, will store some 4,500 drug-test samples to be taken during these games, so they can be thawed out and retested in years to come.Then theres the expense of the games. Big spending and the waste of unused venues in ex-host cities have forced Olympic organizers onto the defensive and left them with a shrinking pool of taxpayers willing to foot the bills. The $10 billion to $12 billion spent on Rios games should have gone to better causes in a city rife with poverty, critics say.After Rio, the Olympics rumble to Tokyo in 2020, leaving Rio de Janeiros 6.5 million people -- the racially mixed, socially divided Cariocas -- with the same concerns the world was largely oblivious to before the Olympic echo chamber turned the Zika virus and favelas into household words.Few outside Brazil cared about untreated sewage and teeming viruses in Rios picture-postcard Guanabara Bay before its polluted waters were chosen for Olympic swimming and sailing. Rios alarming murder rate and turf wars between drug lords and police werent so high on the globes agenda before athletes and hundreds of thousands of Olympic visitors discovered that the prospect of being in harms way has long been the darker flipside of Brazilian Samba, carnival and caipirinha cocktails.Despite the problems, Olympic ideals arent dead. Pope Francis told pilgrims on Wednesday at his weekly audience at the Vatican that in a world thirsty for peace, tolerance and reconciliation, he hopes the games can inspire everyone to pursue a prize that is not a medal but something more precious -- achieving a civilization in which solidarity reigns, founded on the recognition that we are all members of one human family.The U.S. womens basketball coach, Geno Auriemma, called the Olympics a two-week haven where people can get away from it all.Every time you get here, get settled in, nothing seems to matter to any country other than the competition -- as it should be, said Auriemma, now at his third games. These two weeks, the joy and spirit of competition seems to win out.And even on the streets of Rio, some Brazilians are beginning to embrace the moment and all that it means.Finally people are beginning to feel the Olympic spirit, said Ilene Pessoa, a college administrator who lives in Rios Copacabana neighborhood. The eyes of the world are on us.---Associated Press journalists Joshua Goodman, Doug Feinberg and Warren Levinson in Rio de Janeiro and Philippe Sotto in Paris contributed. Hydro Flask Coffee 20 oz Coffee Munt . Michell Burger, a woman who lives on an estate next to Pistorius gated community, said she and her husband were awoken by the screams in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 14 last year, when Pistorius killed Reeva Steenkamp by shooting four times through a door in his bathroom. Hydro Flask Coffee 20 oz Coffee Zwart . This should be celebrated because it will not always be this way. With the amount of money given to players by their clubs these days, it is a wonder that so many of those teams allow the sport to continue to take away many of their assets so they can play for a different team in the middle of their season. http://www.hydroflasknederland.com/hydro-flask-standard-mouth-18-oz-citroen.html . Nathan MacKinnon, Jamie McGinn and Jan Hejda also scored for the Avalanche, who won despite being outshot 38-23. MacKinnons goal, also on the power play, came with just over a minute remaining. Hydro Flask LID & CAP Wide Mouth Straw Lid Flamingo .C. -- Rodney Hood connected from all over the court while freshman Jabari Parker was busy swatting shots and scoring in transition. Hydro Flask Beer & Wine 10 oz Wine Tumbler Vreedzame .com) - Following a late-game loss to the reigning NBA champs, the Toronto Raptors will look to sustain their recent high-level play as they travel to Indiana to take on the Pacers. RIO DE JANEIRO -- It was exactly 80 years ago Sunday that the United States mens eight rowing team -- now famously known as the Boys in the Boat -- won the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. One day shy of that anniversary, the U.S. women -- the Girls in the Boat? -- added to that legacy by rowing to their third consecutive gold medal at the Olympics and their fourth overall.The Boys in the Boat are special because I am a University of Washington alum. There is such great history there and its cool to be a part of that history now, Kerry Simmonds said of the 1936 crew that was composed entirely of UW rowers. What have we added to that legacy? As women, were strong women, but I dont think gender is a big thing. You win Olympic gold no matter what gender you are. Boys in the Boat, Girls in the Boat, were all just in the boat.The victory gave the U.S. 33 gold medals in rowing, matching the former East Germany for most ever by a country in the sport. East Germany is no more, but the Americans are currently the most dominant country in womens rowing. They have not lost an Olympic or world rowing championship in 10 years. Sports Illustrated recently headlined the eights as The Unbeatables.Despite all those victories, coxswain (and another UW alum) Katelin Snyder said she is partly inspired by the 2004 Olympic team that took silver behind Romania. It was the first medal for the U.S. women since winning gold in 1984.So they did something that had essentially hadnt been done in 20 years, Snyder said. I think that today we tried to draw power from that and attack the race as if [winning gold] had never been done before, even though it had. I think when youre in that mindset, youre able to do something special.Rowing at a magnificent venue surrounded by mountains, with the famous Christ the Redeemer statue visible -- Seeing Christ the Redeemer up there is the coolest part for me, Simmonds said -- the U.S. woomen started off in third place but simply kept rowing hard and increasing their speed.dddddddddddd Shortly after the halfway point, they pushed into first place and held it the rest of the way, winning with a time of 6:01.49, nearly 2 ? seconds ahead of silver medalist Great Britain.One of the reasons why the Americans have such success in the eight is because they have such a huge setup of women competing at the collegiate level, British coxswain Zoe de Toledo said. I think that sets a huge base for them, but I think were starting to catch up and the rest of the world is starting to catch up as well.Remember, before the Americans were dominant, the Romanians were dominant. These things come up and down.Thats the way sport is. But with the strength of womens crew in the United States and the considerable competition driving each rower to get better, it could be a while before there is a downturn for the American women.Eleanor Logan doesnt see it. She won gold on the 2008 and 2012 teams as well but said Saturdays victory felt like a totally different experience to her and 2012 gold medalist Meghan Musnicki.We feel so fortunate to be part of this team, Logan said. The hunger to be the best they can be every day has pushed us to a new level. Were not really comparing, we just had to look every day to be better ourselves.Meanwhile, the mens eight finished fourth behind Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. Perhaps like the 1936 team, they needed another couple additional Huskies in the boat (this years team had four). Or a woman.We really are encouraged by the women who came before us and felt the culture of excellence, Simmonds said. We just want to make them proud and ourselves proud and our coaches. And were all working hard to build on the legacy that is the U.S. women. ' ' '