The Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro are about at their halfway mark. A lot can happen before the closing ceremonies on Aug. 21. But Brazilians can be credited for what hasn't happened. Because to date, the Games are going rather well, belying understandable fears about the Zika virus, security threats, unprepared venues, debilitating pollution and other dysfunction that threatened to add the Olympics to the long list of crises buffeting Brazil.

Instead, the Games have mostly played out as intended: An intense and yet joyful competition among the world's best athletes. The American contingent has been especially impressive, particularly in swimming and gymnastics, with Michael Phelps, Simone Biles and others awing audiences worldwide with their grit and grace.

But beyond individual glory (and gold medals), swimming and gymnastics are team sports, as evidenced by the "Final Five" women's gymnastics team and other swimmers — including former University of Minnesota swimmer and current Wayzata High School swim coach David Plummer — propelling the U.S. atop the overall medal standings.

Plummer is one of more than 10 Olympians with Minnesota ties. Following the others, including four Minnesota Lynx basketball players and head coach Cheryl Reeve, will be a compelling connection here at home as the Games proceed. But the Olympic movement is still admirably about internationalism, and at its best it offers a better vision amid a world convulsed in multiple crises.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach did not gloss over these world worries during his opening ceremonies speech. "We are living in a world of crises, mistrust and uncertainty," he said. "We are living in a world where selfishness is gaining ground, where certain people claim to be superior to others."

For each he had an "Olympic answer," including this response: "The ten thousand best athletes in the world, competing with each other, at the same time living peacefully together in one Olympic Village, sharing their meals and emotions. In this Olympic world there is one universal law for everybody. In this Olympic world we see that the values of our shared humanity are stronger than the forces that want to divide us."

And to respond to selfishness and claims of superiority, Bach's Olympic answer was welcoming the Refugee Olympic Team, which should inspire people worldwide but especially the postwar record numbers of people displaced by conflict and grinding poverty.

Brazil would best be served by applying an Olympic answer to its own problems. Once a high-flying developing economy, it's wracked by recession, political scandal, inequality, violence and environmental degradation. These and other issues won't be easily solved, and the Olympics themselves won't turn things around. But just as Rio has rallied to defy expectations with a relatively successful first week of the games, Brazil can begin to come back from its brink and rediscover the reasons why in 2009 the IOC selected it in the first place as the first South American nation to ever host the Olympics.

At a time when nations worldwide seem to be turning increasingly inward, the internationalism of the Olympics does indeed offer an answer, or at least a model, that's based more on optimism than cynicism.