RIO DE JANEIRO -- Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes is back.The face of the Rio Olympics, Paes has shied away from the cameras since the opening ceremony. But he was back in view on Friday, bowing to Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, who arrived wearing a white kimono for a meeting with her Rio counterpart.Paes will hand over the Olympic flag to Kioke at Sundays closing ceremony, the moment eyes turn from South America to Asia, where the next three Winter and Summer Olympics will be held.Paes repeated his spirited defense of holding the Rio Games, saying the Olympics had been a catalyst for building a new subway-line extension, an express-bus system and a renovated port area. He cited a mix or private and public money to stage the games, arguing they were reasonably priced and would leave no white elephants.I think its an amazing legacy for Rio that people will have for many years, Paes said.Credited by the International Olympic Committee for pushing preparations, Paes has often tried to lower expectations about Rios Olympics, which have been plagued by empty seats and organization problems.He did it again with Koike, saying Tokyo is a much more developed city than Rio.If you want to be fair to Rio, you cannot compare us to Tokyo, to Chicago to Madrid, Paes said, citing cities that were beaten out by Rio in 2009 when the IOC chose its 2016 host. These are cities that have much better infrastructure. They come from developed countries. You have to compare Rio to Rio.Paes said the shift to Tokyo should please the IOC, which is coming off difficult games in Sochi, Russia, and Rio de Janeiro.We come from a tropical experience, the Latin ways of Brazil, which sometimes made the IOC members a little bit crazy, Paes said.Paes also noted Koikes kimono, a traditional garment that is used for important ceremonial moments.The great Japanese hospitality is represented by the kimono, Kioke explained. Thats why Im wearing one.Paes replied: The next time I meet her in Tokyo, Im going to wear a kimono, he said. I love it.---Stephen Wade on Twitter: http://twitter.com/StephenWadeAP .His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/stephen-wade wholesale soccer jerseys . All of the scoring came in the final 20:04. Lucic scored on a power play at 15:46 of the third period, when he tipped a shot over Stars goalie Kari Lehtonen for a 3-1 lead. cheap nfl jerseys for china . Westbrook has missed 27 games since having a procedure on Dec. 27 to deal with swelling in his injured right knee — the third operation on the knee in nine months. http://www.cheapnfljerseyschinaforwholesale.com/ . -- Vincent Lecavalier got everything but the desired result in his return to Tampa Bay. cheap soccer jerseys china . -- For the first time in two months, an opponent was standing up to Alabama. cheap football jerseys . The formidable trio of Canadian receivers -- individually known as Chris Getzlaf, Rob Bagg and Andy Fantuz -- will share the field at Mosaic Stadium one more time on Sunday. RIO DE JANEIRO -- Three weeks ago, organizers and event fans were worried that the 2016 Paralympics would not be well-attended. But when Sao Paulo resident Marco Fumis arrived at a lively Olympic Park on Saturday, he was blown away with what he saw.Im positively surprised by this, said Fumis. We are really emotional people, and I think we realized how important it is for not only the Olympics but the Paralympics. A lot of us are here to better understand how these athletes do what they do, so were here to support.The fan support is significant. The 170,000 tickets sold for events at Olympic Park on Saturday, surpassed the one-day total for some days at recent Olympics.It was a really, really cool environment because usually we have like five people in the stands and now we have an entire gym, U.S womens sitting volleyball player Heather Erickson said after her team swept Iran 3-0.On Sunday, 46,000 tickets were sold at Olympic Stadium, the track and field venue separate from Olympic Park, according to the International Paralympic Committee.Everybody wanted to talk about `What about London? IPC spokesman Craig Spence said, referring to the 2012 London Paralympics, for which a record 2.7 million tickets were sold. But (Saturday) surpassed it for me.A last-minute campaign that originated in Great Britain, called (hash)FillTheSeats and supported by donors such as Coldplay, Prince Harry and U.S. Paralympian Tatyana McFadden, boosted sales for tickets given to Brazilian children.Brazilians can buy tickets for as low as 10 reais (about $3) and pay for them on a four-month plan (2.5 reais per month), Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada said.We have a lot of things that are hard for us, the sports brings us feelings of hope, said Sofia Borges, a Rio 2016 volunteer and Sao Paulo native. It brings hope to families and kids, and its also nice to see other sports than soccer.Total ticket sales now sit at 1,863,000, the second-highest Paralympic Games total ever, behind London. Spence admitted that the expectations were low but he said hes overjoyed at how well the games have come together.Weve got full venues, the athletes are loving it and the performance levels are what we expected, Spence said. We said coming in this would be the best Paralympic Games in terms of athletic performance and theyre clearly proving so.Indeed, coming into Sunday, 89 world records had been broken.ddddddddddddWhile Brazilians cheer hardest for Brazilian athletes, others have noticed the emotion that the fans have brought to the games.I think that we gain energy off of the crowd, U.S. womens sitting volleyball coach Bill Hamiter said. It doesnt matter how many people, we were just gaining energy off of them.Andrada described a scene that he felt embodied the spirit of the fans. When the Algerian womens sitting volleyball team was a no-show in its first match against the U.S. on Friday, officials invited children onto the court to play. The crowd stayed to cheer on the children.They could have gone, there werent any high-ranking athletes playing; only children, said Andrada. But 8,000 people decided to stay and cheer on the kids as they learned the sport.The IPC will continue to try raise the profile of para sports between Paralympics. Brazil will host the 2017 Parapan American Youth Games, at a new facility in Sao Paulo. Construction for the Rio 2016 museum will be underway soon, and the IPC is producing a Paralympic Rio 2016 film.As for current media, 154 countries are broadcasting the games worldwide, a 39-country upgrade from 2012, according to the IPC.While these are record numbers, Sao Paulo resident Cristina Fumis, who attended events at Olympic Park over the weekend, said she believes that the media exposure can be better.The announcement for the opening ceremony was not on the front page, only a small section in the back, said Fumis of how a Sao Paulo newspaper covered the Paralympics opening ceremony. I think the media is powerful in the way that it can change the mindset of the population.While Spence is excited about ticket sales greatly exceeding expectations, he knows that preparation is key for maximizing potential.Weve sold about 1.5 million tickets in the last three weeks, and thats because we did a real big push on tickets, said Spence. Had we done this push a lot earlier, I know we could have sold out these games.---Kennington Lloyd Smith III is a journalism student at the University of Georgia. Penn State and Georgia are partnering with The Associated Press to supplement coverage of the 2016 Paralympics. ' ' '