Opening Ceremonies

WOW....Really the only word I can use to describe opening ceremonies.  It was incredible.  I know that I will not begin to do it justice, but I will try... The ceremony was 3 hours long. It was located in an outdoor arena and the foot of the ski jump area.  There were 9000 + people in attendance. The stage was set at the bottom of the ski jump and the torch (multiple) was on the opposite side of the jump, up on a hill. 

After the athletes were placed in the stadium (there is no seating, just levels to stand), the program went "Live" and was broadcast in over 20 of the 70 countries that have teams competing in the games...Shame on US for not thinking this was worthwhile, but I digress.  The President of Austria was there and in attendance with the President of the Olympic Committee who both spoke and acknowledged the athletes. 

This is the stage and where you see the red carpet, is where the athletes paraded out from under. to the right is the ski jump hill and the stairs lead to another stage where the Olympic flag and Austrian flag were risen. The program began with some guy who thought he was funny, and proceeded with the parade of 1000 athletes from out of the tunnel. They came out by country; I believe all of them had to about die when they looked up and saw all of the people.  Nick is on the right of the picture above.  Thanks to my friend, Kathy, I had a great zoom lens on the camera she let me borrow, unfortunately the USER of the camera is not so bright as you will hear about later....

The program went on with different variety acts ranging from ball room dancing to hip hop to polka to clogging. The majority of the program was focused on the fact that Innsbruck is the only city to host the Olympics 3 times. They showed video clips from the 1964 Olympics and did a skit using 1960's music and dance while the video was running. Using the same platform, it moved to 1976 and had same type of show.  It moved to 2012, and did a whole montage of what has happened between 1976 and now, with music, video clips etc.. It ended with a group of kids looking as if they were IM'ing each other over a computer, using all of the LOL and BTW LMAO etc..It was very cool.

Then it was time for the presentation of flags. Our US team voted for one of the bobsled members to carry our flag. they announced each country separately and had a map to show where all of the countries are that were participating.

Finally, and by now everyone was freezing, it was time to raise the Olympic flag and light the torch. Ass the flag was being raised, my camera ran out of battery!!!! So, I was not able to capture the torch being lit! Sooooo mad! However, it was very cool.  The torch was skied down the ski jump, handed off to various past gold medal winners from Austria, walked through the crowd and then back down to the stage where it was carried up by the final torch bearer.  She then climbed 100 snow stairs to the top of the 3 cauldrons. The top cauldron was lit for the 1964 olympics by a medalist from those games. It was then given to the next medalist from the 1976 games who lit the middle torch and was finally given to a member of the Austrian luge team from 2012, who lit the final of the 3 torches. It was very cool. See the picture below and just pretend they are lit!!! I will get a picture of them lit at a later date. It was a very inspiring program. I could see Nick and Team USA from where I was standing.  He and his team were dancing , laughing, posing for pictures and really just having the time of their lives!!!  It was awesome to see....

Off to a hockey game!!!! More later...And yes, I grabbed the back up battery....