August 14, 2004
By JAMES CHRISTIE
Saturday's Globe and Mail

Olympics open with lavish ceremony

Athens — With ancient hills as a backdrop, classical myths as a theme and a spectacular high-tech pageant on water, land and in the air, Greece proudly welcomed the Olympic Games back to their ancestral home last night.

While a blimp floated on patrol overhead and security was tight with armed guards at entrances, the measures were not oppressive.

Nothing dampened the spirits of the 72,000 fans on the sultry night the 28th Olympics returned to Greece after being revived in Athens 108 years ago.

People waved flags, shone lights, rang little bells and roared loudly when the Greek flag was brought in to lead the parade of 201 countries and again when the Greek team had the honour of coming in at the end with a giant flag of its own.

Canada, spelled with a K in the Greek lexicon, came into the teeming, refurbished Olympic Stadium 72nd and received a warm welcome. Flag-bearer Nicolas Gill, a two-time medalist in judo, carried the Maple Leaf and held the national banner higher than anyone else, except possibly China's towering basketball hero, Yao Ming.Criticized in some media reports for his Quebec nationalist feelings, Gill had no problems being Canada's standard-bearer.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that's hard to describe in words," he said on his cellphone from the middle of the field. "It's the third time I've marched in an opening ceremony. There were a lot of Canadian flags in the crowd, and I carried mine high and wanted to wave it to them and salute our fans."

Besides Gill and Yao, some of the champions who bore flags were sprinters Kim Collins of St. Kitts and Nevis and Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago.

Basketball star Dawn Staley led the huge U.S. contingent, while weightlifter Thomas Meameaa represented Kiribati, a sprinkling of tiny Pacific islands.

Icelandic pop star Bjork entertained the athletes.

The two astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Gennady Padalka and Mike Fincke, spoke to the athletes about the spirit of international co-operation and then pushed off for a weightless glide through the cabin, their version of an Olympic sprint.

Four hundred drummers pounded out the rhythm of a heartbeat and 2,428 dancers and performers took part in the spectacle.The show and the arena had some technological wizardry.

The floor of the arena was flooded with more than two million litres of water. It took six hours to fill, but only three minutes to drain.

On this sea, a young boy sailed homeward in a paper boat waving the Greek flag. A pyrotechnic comet was launched from a video screen and landed in the water, where five Olympic rings of fire were ignited. A statue of a giant head rose out of the water and split into fragments shaped as torsos of classical statues. They ultimately came to rest in the water, symbolizing the Greek islands.

The god of love, Eros, flew overhead on a cable net system 36 metres over two lovers cavorting in the water.

There followed a procession of figures from Greek history and mythology, goddesses and chariots and a leaping bull, fishermen, Mycean women, a centaur, Agamemnon, Hercules, Pegasus, Zeus, Hera and Athena.Greek President Konstantinos Stephanopoulos declared the Games open.

Athens Games president Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki called the athletes "worthy heirs" of the first champion of the ancient Games, Coroebus, a cook from Elis.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, paid homage to Greece for giving the world the ancient Games, then reviving them. He asked the athletes to promote peace "and by your conduct give us reason to believe in the values of sport by refusing doping and respecting fair play."

That reference may have been inspired by the pre-Games controversy surrounding Greek sprint hero Kostas Kederis.

He wasn't around when IOC officials wanted to test him for drugs at the Olympic Village, then subsequently was involved in a motorcycle crash, landing him in hospital and unavailable for a test.The IOC gave Kederis and Katerina Thanou, a fellow sprinter also hurt in the accident, 72 hours to report for the test, but Rogge noted before the ceremony that even a few hours was enough time to use a catheter to implant a clean urine sample or to change the blood chemistry.

Local media reports had pegged Kederis, the 2000 Sydney gold medalist in the 200 metres, as a likely pick to be the last carrier of the Olympic flame on its round-the-world journey. But the duty of lighting the 31-metre-long cauldron designed by Santiago Calatrava was given to Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, a 1996 gold medalist in windsurfing.

There was no indication last night that the predominantly Greek crowd had any hard feelings about being saddled with a huge public debt after the Games.

The costs have gone from an original estimate of $7-billion (U.S.) to more than $9-billion and could go much higher.

Rogge was asked yesterday morning whether he thought he might be booed at the ceremony because of the public's big financial hangover. A media member asked whether the IOC would help with the bills.

"The IOC is already footing 60 per cent of the bill for running the Games, we're giving ATHOC [the organizing committee] more than $1-billion," he said, referring to the operations, not the construction projects.

"You can't say the Olympic Games alone is responsible for the new airport, the ring roads, the trains, the opening of the waterfront.

These were government decisions, and a legacy that's a blessing for Athens. But it takes only $2-billion to run the Games and we pay more than half [from sources such as broadcast rights]."

reprinted with permission