Opening ceremony gets the gold

Like many people, I care passionately about winter sports for the couple weeks each four years that encompass the Winter Olympic Games. I practice none of them, except as spectator sport, but I enjoy the excuse to make hot chocolate, just like I did when I actually spent time outdoors in the winter. Ice dancing is great, the sliding sports, and watching people dressed in bright synthetic skins flying though the air–it’s all great spectacle, and it speaks to the heights of human achievement and the depths of individual endurance.

All that aside, my favorite event comes at the beginning, and no one hands out medals for it–I’m talking about the opening ceremonies. No other occasion, besides an emperor’s birthday, can lead a nation to splurge that deeply for a one-night party. I like to see a country make its best effort.

Among recent competitors, I give the bronze to Beijing. They went big and spared no expense. The torch-bearer flying around the Bird’s Nest Stadium to light the Olympic flame was epic. And the fireworks display was like nothing seen since the bombing of Dresden. But I have to take off points for the computer-generated additions to the televised display.

London takes the silver–in part for departing so far from their traditional reserve as to parachute their beloved monarch onto the stage. London as a whole was at its loopiest and the music was way better than China’s.

But I have to reserve the gold for the winner and still champion, Torino, Italy, host of the 2006 Winter Games. Here’s what I wrote about their opening ceremony at the time:

If you’re a fan of Chinese revolutionary ballet, or whatever it is that 50,000 North Korean schoolgirls do with flags and scarfs in that enormous square in Pyongyang, the opening ceremony of the Winter Games was a special treat.

The theme of passion was introduced by a percheron-shaped man in red rubber pounding flames out of Vulcan’s forge with a giant hammer. Fire shot out of the heads of speed skaters, an apparent tribute to everyone who died immediately after saying, “Hey, watch this!” A splendiferous tribute to the Alps featured ice dancers in cow-dappled livery, creepy tree-people, Europe’s entire supply of lederhosen, and a bunch of guys smoking something from 20-foot-long pipes.

The Italian flag was raised by men inexplicably dressed in costumes borrowed from The Nutcracker Suite, and a very sweet nine-year-old sang the Italian anthem which, though my Italian is a little rusty, seems to contain a lyric that translates as “Why did my mom make me wear this?”

High fashion was everywhere in evidence, from the Armani-designed white tunics for the Italian Olympic veterans, which made them look like the Council of the Wise from a 1950s sci-fi thriller, to the floor-length jaggedy Alp gowns of those leading in the national delegations. My overall impression was of Lawrence Welk on acid, mixed with Woody Allen spoofing Fellini, as reenacted by Cirque du Soleil. Wish I could have been there.

I have hopes for up-and-coming contender Russia tomorrow. A troupe of shirtless Putin acrobats, perhaps, while the Red Army chorus sings “Winter Wonderland.” We’ll just have to wait and see. I imagine Nancie Battaglia will provide some great photos of the extravaganza on our The North Country at Sochi page. Hold up your opening ceremony scorecards in a comment below.

Tags: listeningpost, olympics14