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Gallery: Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony

A giant 'starlit' bear welcomed the world to Vancouver as part of the XXI Winter Olympics at BC Place Stadium.

A giant ‘starlit’ bear welcomed the world to Vancouver as part of the XXI Winter Olympics at BC Place Stadium.

The indoor ceremony sprang to life with culture, colour, lights, dance, pop, opera, sport and spectacle in an Opening Ceremony produced by Australia’s David Atkins.

There were whales, tap dancers, poetry, fiddlers, totem poles, the traditions of folklore, maple leaves, Donald Sutherland, Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan, Nellie Furtado, and k.d. lang.

The ceremony was dedicated to a Georgian athlete who tragically lost his life training on the luge on the first day of the Olympiad. Many athletes, including the Australian team, wore black arm bands in tribute. One minute’s silence was also observed.

But in a moment reminiscent of the Sydney Olympics the lighting of the cauldron was marred by the failure as one of three support furnaces failed to rise.

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32 Responses

  1. Worst opening ceremony of all those I’ve seen in the last 20 years – whilst the whole cauldron thing was a frace, lighting an indoor cauldron for 20 minutes which would mean nothing for the rest of the games. An indoor stadium should never be permitted again, but even with it something better could have been done, even if it was lighting the main outdoor cauldron by lighting something inside.

  2. I wouldn’t bag all of Nine commentary of the Opening Ceremony. There was a third guy commentating with Eddie and Leila during the parade of nations. I forgot his name, but he did a great job i think telling us about the olympians, proving his expertise about winter sports. Far better than what Moron McGuire and the CEO’s wife could do.

  3. We know Leila McKinnon is on a good thing with her off screen connections at Nine but can’t they give her bags of money for an off screen job so at least we can watch the coverage without the superfluous comments?

  4. Thank you so much for these beautiful pictures from the Opening Ceremony!!! The Ceremony was absolutely awesome – very, very beautiful. The lighting, music and props were absolutely outstanding. Take a bow, David Atkins, Ignatius Jones and all responsible for this visually uplifting feast for the eyes! Congratulations, Canada, beautiful job!

  5. It would have been a sign of respect at least pronounce the name of the deceased Georgian athlete correctly, but Eddie couldn’t even get that right! How embarrassing… And I know all the networks are given a script of the ceremony to base their commentary on, but you could at least try to make it sound like you’re not reading it out verbatim.

  6. Its Time for Seven to tackle the Games head on and get the rights back. After last night i couldnt stand one more minute of Eddie McGuire. At least Seven have likeable people in their commentary and they actually know what they are talking about.

    Seven could put in a bid in which it has 5 or 6 channels of events or even more now that the next rights up for grabs will mean everything FTA will be digital. So they can put a more pursuasive bid in and more incentive. People have said now PayTV has it, it wont go back but if its only digital around i can see Seven covering it like no network has covered it before.

  7. Eddie McGuire is no Bruce. I never thought I’d miss Mr McAvaney but during the opening ceremony as the athletes were coming into the stadium and Eddie was struggling to say anything about them – I missed Bruce and Ralene and the crew. Ken Sutcliffe is no Sandy Roberts either!!

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