Sochi Olympics Day 0 - Memories of Past Opening Ceremonies

The XXII Olympic Winter Games in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, Russia are now officially underway. Unfortunately, through the miracle of television, we on the west coast of the US still have another 8 hours or so before we can watch the Opening Ceremonies. Normally, I'd be railing against NBC for once again, failing to understand a world which includes instant communications. But this time, I'm inclined to cut them some slack because they are going to be streaming over 1500 hours of live coverage during the Games - I just have to figure out how to adjust my sleep schedule to accommodate the 12 hour time difference between Sochi and Cupertino! With some time on my hands, I thought that I would take a few minutes to give some of my impressions from past Olympic Opening Ceremonies and what I look forward to in the Opening Ceremonies in Sochi.

 

Beth and I have been fortunate enough to attend four Opening Ceremonies: Lillehammer (1994), Atlanta (1996), Nagano (1998) and Vancouver (2010), but the first one is the most special. The Opening Ceremonies for the 1994 Olympics were held in the Ski Jump stadium at the top of the hill above the village of Lillehammer in the early evening. We had left the relative comfort of the home that we were staying at near Hamar and boarded an Olympic transportation bus to Lillehammer around noon with the plan of getting something to eat and then looking around before heading up the hill around 4pm to find our seats. Lillehammer is probably the last Olympics held in a small town. With a population of perhaps 35,000, we found Lillehammer bursting at the seams as hundreds of thousands of spectators flooded into town. We could not find a single restaurant that was not completely packed so we ended up in a big plastic tent that had been setup to provide warmth and some fast food to spectators. There we stayed until it was time to leave for the Opening Ceremonies. The hill was pretty steep and we saw a number of people slip on the ice and slide back down the hill, but we managed to make it to our seats near the back row of the stadium. Stadium makes it sound much more solid than it really was. Imagine a natural bowl with the Ski Jump off in one direction and the rest of the bowl surrounded by bleachers. Each seat at the Opening Ceremonies has a seat package that includes all sorts of things that spectators will need to take part in the entertainment portion of the evening. All I can recall in our seat package was a program and what looked like a white, wearable garbage bag - I guess the entertainment director wanted to create the image of the stage surrounded by snow, rather than spectators. I wasn't about to complain as it did add another, albeit feeble, layer of insulation against the mind-numbing cold. By the time the ceremony started, the temperature was well below 0F. It also became clear that no one was going to sit on the metal bleacher seats - I guess for fear of freezing to them. At least when standing, we could move around a little to generate heat. The atmosphere in the stadium was electric. Part of that was the natural thrill of the opening to the Olympics after seven hard years of preparation. But there was also a palpable sense of fear. The plan was for the Olympic flame to be brought into the stadium by a ski jumper. However, in practice the day before, the ski jumper had crashed and injured himself. So the organizers had to go with the backup jumper and a good part of the nation had an image in their minds of another crash and the Olympic torch tumbling end over end in front of a projected worldwide audience of perhaps a billion people. Much of the opening ceremonies went by in a blur - I remember trolls, Vikings, people in horse-pulled sleighs and a bunch of nymph-like things that created the world out of an egg, but everyone was focused on that Ski Jump. Finally, the athletes were in place and everyone turned to stare up the hill. After a few moments, we could see (or thought that we could see) a weak flame. Then the flame started moving downhill, faster and faster and finally, the backup jumper landed short, but respectably in the Stadium and you could hear a sound very much like an entire nation starting to breathe again followed by a huge cheer.

 

 

Two years later, we attended our first Summer Olympics in Atlanta. We tried again to get Opening Ceremonies tickets, but were not been as lucky in the ticket lottery. But at the last second, we were told that after final placement of the TV cameras, space for a few more tickets had been found, would we like them? Of course we would! Atlanta was every bit as hot as Lillehammer was cold. The organizing committee had somehow convinced the International Olympic Committee that the average temperature in Atlanta in August was 89F. Of course, what they didn't say was that that this was the 24hr average. So when we arrived in the Stadium, the temperature was well above 90F with about 110% humidity. The Ceremony started out great - five compressed air-powered spirits in the colors of the Olympic rings rose from the corner of the stadium. They called forth the tribes of the world during the playing of composer John William's song Summon the Heroes. The tribes, also in the colors of the rings, arrived and went into a great drum solo written by Grateful Dead and Planet Drum drummer Mickey Hart. This was followed a little later by a section called Summertime which tried to explain the culture of the Old South and it's rebirth after the Civil War. From there, things went way downhill culminating in a section involving cheerleaders, pickup trucks and spotlights. I remember that it seemed to take forever for the athletes to enter the stadium because more than six times as many athletes took part than had been in Lillehammer. But the most memorable event was the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. I am not sure whether there was any question who was going to light the cauldron in Lillehammer (it was the Crown Prince), but I remember a huge amount of discussion about it in Atlanta. Finally, after several laps around the stadium by memorable US athletes, the torch was handed off to the greatest boxer of all time, Mohammad Ali. Despite the obvious effects of Parkinson's disease, he was able to light the cauldron and received a huge ovation from the crowd.

 

 

Another two years and we managed the three-peat by securing Opening Ceremony tickets to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Nagano, with a population of perhaps 350,000 was a much different place than the town of Lillehammer. I remember that the bus dropped us off quite some distance from the Stadium. I was wearing a black Norwegian hat and ski vest, both covered with Olympic pins, and dark glasses. The people in the neighborhoods we were walking through just stopped what they were doing and looked at me. To them, I might as well have been from Mars. The Opening Ceremonies began with a huge group of workers in traditional outfits constructing eight two-ton wooden gates at each entrance to the stadium. This was followed by a parade of Sumo wrestlers, led by the Yokozuna (Grand Champion) Akebono who was actually from Hawaii. Akebono blessed the stadium and then the athletes entered the stadium, each team led by a Sumo champion and a child from the Nagano area. Japan definitely wanted to blend tradition with technology so the music was conducted by Boston Symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa featuring simultaneous links with symphonies on five continents. Finally, the Olympic cauldron was lit by figure skater Midori Ito wearing a beautiful traditional kimono. On the way out of the stadium, I was stopped by a reporter from Japanese network NHK. The reporter asked me if I thought that the Ceremony was "too Japanese". I told her that it was my belief that one of the purposes of the Opening Ceremonies was to introduce their city, region and nation to the world and that anything that they felt was important to include was fine with me.

 

 

Our last (so far!) Opening Ceremonies was in Vancouver in 2010. This was our first indoor Opening Ceremonies and was very much appreciated as it seemed like it rained constantly while we were there. This was also Sean's first Opening Ceremonies although you could argue that it was his second as Beth was four months pregnant with him in Nagano. It was certainly his first Opening Ceremonies with a view! Just like in Lillehammer, our seat package included a colored Garbage bag to put on. But there were a bunch of lights and other doodads as well. By 2010, the Opening Ceremonies have grown into a huge spectacle viewed by 3-4 billion people and the audience is expected to contribute. Each section of the Stadium had a "teacher" whose job it was to instruct us in our jobs for the Opening Ceremonies. While she tried hard to make sure that we "got it", probably two-thirds of the people in our section failed to do any of what they had been instructed to do! My favorite part of the Opening Ceremonies was the welcome by the First Nation tribes, but I also enjoyed a section covering the immigrant and British periods in Canadian history and music. I paid more attention than usual to the people chosen to carry the Olympic flag into the arena. You could tell how honored people like actor Donald Sutherland and hockey legend Bobby Orr were to have been chosen for this task. I was also moved by the tribute to Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed during a training run earlier in the day. While it was almost a given that the greatest hockey player of all time, Wayne Gretzky, was going to light the Olympic cauldron, the design of the cauldron, the malfunction of one of the four arms of the cauldron and the fact that four athletes would light the cauldron simultaneously still made it exciting to watch.

 

 

So what do I expect from the Opening Ceremonies at Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi? I have no idea what to expect, and that is part of the charm. As I told the reporter in Nagano, the Opening Ceremonies is a chance for the organizers to tell the story of their city/region/country that they want to tell. In the US, we have been hearing about Russia, and the Soviet Union before that, since I was a small child. But this was always about what our government wanted us to know about them. Since the US, foolishly in my opinion, chose to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, this is really the first time that Russia, particularly southern Russia, gets a chance to tell us what they want us to know about them. This is part of what the Olympics is all about - bringing the peoples of the world together, learning a little about each other and learning how to compete with each other in peace. Bring on the Games!