Excitement and sadness mark 2010 Winter Games opening ceremonies

VANCOUVER – A highly anticipated evening of promise and pageantry as the Winter Games officially began was undercut by the tragic death of a Georgian athlete earlier Friday and confusion surrounding the lighting of the cauldron for the XXI Winter Olympiad.

Wearing black arm bands, 11 athletes from Georgia paraded into BC Place Stadium during the Games’ opening ceremonies and removed their hats in tribute to 21-year-old luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died during a practice run earlier in the day, marring the start of the third Games to be contested on Canadian soil.

The overflow crowd rose as one to give the beleaguered Georgian team – and nation – a standing ovation.

Even as the city was gearing up for the opening ceremony, television stations began airing shocking footage of 21-year-old luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili from Georgia crashing into a metal pole during a late-morning training run at Whistler. The International Olympic Committee confirmed that Kumaritashvili died in hospital a short time later. An investigation is underway.

"This is a very sad day," IOC president Jacques Rogge said, wiping tears from his eyes at the start of an early afternoon news conference at the Games’ media centre. "The IOC is in deep mourning.

"Here you have a young athlete who lost his life pursuing his passion. He had a dream to participate at the Olympic Games. He trained hard and he had this fatal accident. I have no words to say what we feel."

The death lent a sombre air to the evening’s celebrations before 60,500 people at BC Place Stadium and an estimated three billion television viewers around the world.

At the ceremony, Rogge stood with John Furlong, chief executive officer of the Vancouver Organizing Committee, to express his condolences to those Kumaritashvili has left behind.

"We extend our deepest sympathies to his family, his friends, his teammates, and countrymen," he said, before letting Furlong address the hometown crowd.

"With Jack Poole and Nodar Kumaritashvili in our hearts, and standing on the shoulders of every Canadian," Furlong said, referring also to Poole, the VANOC chairman who died just hours after the Olympic flame was lit in Greece on Oct. 23, "I commit that the men and women of Vancouver 2010, our partners and our friends are ready to deliver the performance of a lifetime."

The uncomfortable juxtaposition of celebration and grief marked the day.

Television coverage switched from the grim scenes on the mountain to crowds of smiling, cheering people lining Vancouver’s rain-soaked streets for a glimpse of the Olympic torch as it wound its way to the stadium to open the Games.

The identity of the final torchbearer was a topic of much speculation leading up to opening ceremony. But, in the end, it was not a single athlete, but four that lit the cauldron. However, an exterior cauldron was also expected to be lit by a torchbearer who was not revealed at deadline.

Famed wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen carried the flame into the stadium where it was passed from gold-medal winning speedskater Catriona Le May Doan to NBA star Steve Nash to gold medal skier Nancy Greene and, finally, to hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

There was then a lengthy pause as it appeared the cauldron, which was supposed to rise from the stage like four shards of ice, malfunctioned. In the end, only three of the shards materialized.

So Doan simply watched while Nash, Green and Gretzky walked to the base of the shards, touched their torches, and watched the flames rise to the top of the cauldron – symbolizing the start of the Games.

Gretzky then carried the flame to cauldron outside the arena, which had been kept hidden in the lead-up to the Games.

The star-studded finale began with the arrival of the Olympic flag carried by hockey star Bobby Orr, singer Anne Murray, race-car driver Jacques Villeneuve, astronaut Julie Payette, actor Donald Sutherland, Terry Fox’s mother, Betty Fox, figure skater Barbara Ann Scott-King and Senator Romeo Dallaire, who led the United Nations observer mission in Uganda and Rwanda.

Canadian women’s hockey star Hayley Wickenheiser took the athletes’ oath, and Governor General Micha’lle Jean declared the games open at 8:30 p.m.

Earlier, the ceremonies began with audience members wearing different coloured ponchos – doing the wave to create the effect of a clock ticking down.

A video then appeared on the stadium’s giant screens, showing a snowboarder launching himself down a precipice and, seemingly, into the stadium. There, a real snowboarder shot down a ramp and through the Olympic Rings, landing on the arena’s snow-white floor.

The spectacular opening set the stage for the arrival of the key dignitaries and the Four Host First Nations – marking the fact that Canada is the first country to recognize indigenous people as partners in an Olympic Games.

In fact, it was aboriginal youth from across the country – Inuit, Metis, and the First Nations of the Prairies, the North and the East – who welcomed the athletes to Vancouver by dancing around a massive drum in their traditional regalia.

The athletes, representing 82 countries marched into the stadium under the Olympic Rings. Greece led the procession with host Canada the last to enter the stadium.

Led by cyclist-turned-speedskater Clara Hughes, who has won medals at both the Summer and Winter Games, the Canadian contingent received a deafening standing ovation that began before they even entered the arena at 7:14 p.m.

In all, more than 2,700 men and women are expected to compete in 86 medal events – breaking the record of 2,508 at the 2006 Games in Turin.

Those athletes enjoyed a celebration of Canada’s wild beauty – from the Northern Lights to a polar bear to a pod of orcas, who magically appeared when the floor appeared to crack like ice a transform into ocean. In between, they were treated to performances by some of Canada’s top musical talent including Bryan Adams and Nelly Furtado, fiddler Ashley MacIsaac and singer Sarah McLachlan.

Nikki Yanofsky, the 15-year-old singer from Montreal who recorded the Games’ theme song, sang the Canadian anthem as the ceremony began.

Singer k.d. lang performed a true Canadian classic – Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – accompanied by just a piano, a poignant moment of understated sincerity in a night filled with glitz and glamour.

From the opening ceremony, Canada hopes to move on and improve upon its fifth-place finish and 24 medals of four years ago.

Despite all the hand-wringing about Canada’s failure to win gold at home in two previous Olympics, the country’s athletes expect to improve upon their medal haul of Turin, which included seven gold.

Indeed, Canada’s officials say they hope to be sitting atop the medal standings at the end of the 17-day competition. While that may be optimistic, nobody expects Canada to get shut out.

Sports Illustrated, which picked Germany to finish first, predicts Canada will win 10 gold, 11 silver and nine bronze. Canwest’s sports team, meanwhile, suggests Canada could win as many as 12 gold.

The first of those could come as early as Saturday in the men’s downhill, the men’s short track or in women’s moguls where Jenn Heil defends the gold medal she won in Turin.