None beyond their own bodyweight.

The photograph shows an impressive feat in which dozens of acrobats stood on top of each other (relying on mounted platforms) to create a human tower in the likeness of the torch.

Emphasis mine. Most of the weight is born by platforms that the humans are obscuring the view of. Look at the postures of each tier; none are braced for any significant weight.

Others have covered that there were internal supports, so they were supporting nothing at all. But let's assume they weren't.

I'm going for an intentional underestimate - so let's say there are 10 people in your layer (I think 8 is more likely), then 24 above them, 18 above them, 18 above them, 25 above them, 14 above them, and 2 above them. I think most people would agree those are underestimates for each ring.

That's 101 people being supported by 10 people. If we take another underestimate that each of those people weighs 100 pounds (45.36 kg) then that's 10,100 pounds (4581.28 kg) - or 1010 pounds (458.13 kg) supported by each of the 10 people in your ring, completely ignoring the weight of the metal rings visible in the picture. So I think it's safe to say it was mostly the internal supports at work.

As said by many, there's a hidden structure that supports everyone here. So every athlete is only supporting themselves.

If you want to see people supporting each other in a tower structure search for Catalonian Castells.

If you watch closely how most of them are standing and holding the platform above them I doubt they are holding any weight. Most of them have hands crossed, elbows unlocked, or bear the wiight woth neck (heads down) so they are holding nothing. Also some levels are clearly not holding anything from the floor above. So since It can't stand floating, some kind of platform is involved.

My conclusion is they are just standing in an aseathic way over a platform and not carrying any wight.

It doesn't look like they're carrying any weight. If you look at this video of the opening ceremonies, right at the beginning you can see the athletes in the torch not actually touching the level above them.

Longer versions of the ceremony seem to show moments where the acrobats on lower levels both have their hands out into the air, or are even hanging from the level above them - suggesting any given level is capable of supporting both the weight of those below and above it.

Idk but that looks like it would be an awkward time to get an erection.

since they’re billed as ‘acrobats’, I assumed skill was involved

How do you think they got up there?

MFW I trained for years to be the best athlete I can be

MFW my role is to just sit on the ground

There is absolutely a structure supporting the weight of the acrobats at each level. You can clearly see two platforms. And how else are those folks leaning outward supposed to be supported if not for a central structure. They'd just fall out if they weren't reaching back holding onto a central structure.

It looks like a rotor made of human flesh.

About one and a half football fields.

Oh, about seven and a half.

Nobody answered the question assuming they were somehow holding each other up. I think just take the weight of the average person and multiply it by how many people are above the level you’re considering and then divide by the number of people.

I dunno, but the devil on my shoulder wants to see one of them stumble and collapse the whole weird thing, just to see what happens.

Me at layer 4 losing my pants, grabing them, leading to a collapse of the whole thing...

!lemmySilver