by Alex Coopersmith, staff reporter
From human rights questions, the $51 billion price tag, corruption, the threat of terrorism and the question of why the Winter Olympics are being held in a Russian summer resort, there is a feeling of unpredictability about this Winter Olympics.
But the opening ceremony of the Olympics transcends all these questions. The opening ceremony of the Olympics shows countries of the world coming together, and has answered one question definitively–that the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics will be one of a kind.
For the opening ceremony, Russia had a tough act to follow, with the 2008 opening ceremony in Beijing lauded as the best of all time. Still, the ceremony began with a video showing each letter of Russia’s cyrillic alphabet, and then stage props and an 11-year-old dancer performed a dance that symbolized the geographical differences of Russia and the spirit of the Russian people, which was very difficult for observers to understand.
The beginning climaxed with five huge snowflakes morphing into five Olympic rings. But, there was a technical glitch and one of the snowflakes failed to change. However, all other parts of the opening ceremony went off without a hitch.
After the opening salvo, the parade of nations occurred. In this parade, all the countries in the Olympics were introduced in alphabetical order–Russian alphabetical order. The first country was Greece, followed by Australia and Austria, with the United States wedged between Slovenia and Tajikistan.
After the parade of nations, the ceremony went through a very idealized Russian history pageant. The few chosen moments of history played out on the floor of the Fisht stadium, a stadium made solely for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2014 Olympic games.
There were some weird moments (such as: giant white mechanical horses dragging a giant red circle across a the stadium, a bunch of onion domes symbolizing St. Basil’s cathedral and those inflatable balloons that you see at car dealerships on the highway), but in large part, the dancing and props made sense, highlighting the high points of Russia’s history.
The last part was the lighting of the Olympic torch. There were six separate torchbearers who passed the torch among themselves, then ran through all the performers in the opening ceremony and out of the stadium. Outside, the torchbearer gracefully lit the Olympic torch, prompting fireworks and the end of a very extravagant opening ceremony.
Though not all aspects of it had anything to do with winter sports and the Olympics, the opening ceremony achieved part of its goal–to get us excited about the Winter Olympics and eager to watch.
While some parts of the Olympics have ended, other parts have yet to get started. So ignore the Kremlinology of the opening ceremonies statement about Russia’s geopolitical future, and embark on the real goal of the opening ceremony, watching great athletes accomplish great feats.
To live stream the Olympics, which run from Feb. 7-23, head to NBC’s website.
