Olympic Games ceremony
The Olympic Games ceremonies are events held at the Olympic Games since their beginning in the ancient Olympics, including the opening, closing, and medal ceremonies. Their purpose is to introduce and conclude the competition, award the successful competitors, and often to celebrate the culture and history of the hosting country. The ceremonies are integral to the Games and symbolize the international cooperation fostered in the Olympic sporting events.
Ancient forerunners
The ancient Olympics, held in Greece from to, provide the first examples of Olympic ceremonies. The victory celebration, elements of which persist in the modern-day medal and closing ceremonies, often involved elaborate feasts, drinking, singing, and the recitation of poetry. The more wealthy the victor, the more extravagant the celebration. The victors were presented with an olive wreath or crown, harvested from a special tree in Olympia by a boy specially selected for this purpose, using a golden sickle. The festival would conclude with the victors making solemn vows and performing ritual sacrifices to the various gods to whom they were beholden.There is evidence of dramatic changes in the format of the ancient Games over the nearly 12 centuries that they were celebrated. By roughly the 77th Olympiad, a standard programme was eventually established. In order to open the Games in ancient Greece, the organizers would hold an Inauguration Festival, followed by a ceremony in which the athletes took an oath of sportsmanship. The first competition, an artistic contest of trumpeters and heralds, concluded the opening festivities.
Evolution of the ceremonies
Some elements of the modern ceremonies date back to the ancient Games from which the modern Olympics draw their ancestry; an example of this is the prominence of Greece in both the opening and closing ceremonies. During the 2004 Summer Olympics, the medal winners received a crown of olive branches—a direct reference to the ancient Games where the victor's prize was an olive wreath. The various elements of the ceremonies are mandated by the Olympic Charter and cannot be changed. The host nation is required to seek the approval of the International Olympic Committee for proposed ceremony elements, including the artistic portions of the opening and closing ceremonies.The Olympic ceremonies have evolved over the centuries. The ancient Games incorporated ceremonies to mark the beginning and ending of every sporting event. There are similarities and differences between the ancient Olympic ceremonies and their modern counterparts. While the presentation of the Games has evolved with improvements in technology and the desire of the host nations to showcase their own artistic expression, the basic events of each ceremony have remained unchanged. The presentation of the opening and closing ceremonies continues to increase in scope, scale and expense, with each successive celebration of the Games, but they are still steeped in tradition.
Opening
While the Olympic Mass has inaugurated the Olympic Truce since 1896 to include the religious dimension of the Olympic Games, the Olympic opening ceremony represents the official commencement of an Olympic Games and the end of the current Olympic cycle. Due to the tight schedule of the Games, it is usual for some of the sporting events to start two or three days before the opening ceremony. For example, at the 2008 Summer Olympics, the football competitions for both men and women began two days prior to the opening ceremony.This has also been the case in the Winter Olympics, where the ice hockey preliminary round has sometimes begun on the eve of the opening ceremony.
As mandated by the Olympic Charter, various elements frame the opening ceremony of a celebration of the Olympic Games. Most of these rituals were established at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
Tickets
Tickets for the opening ceremony are often the most expensive and sought-after of the Games. Unsurprisingly, this was not the case for the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics because these Games were held behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In accordance with strict pandemic protocols, the opening ceremonies took place with only invited guests in attendance.Time of day
Since the 1996 Summer Olympics, the host committee has been required to stage the opening ceremony on a Friday evening. The 1980 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Moscow took place at sunset, marking the first time the ceremony was held in the evening. Eight years later, to facilitate a live, prime-time broadcast on Friday night in the Americas, the 1988 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Seoul was held in the morning, a move that faced criticism from the athletes due to the excessive heat. Generally, no competition is scheduled to begin on the day of the opening ceremony; between 1992 and 2020, this practice was codified in the Olympic Charter. However, the rule has been relaxed several times because of the tight calendar of the Games and the preliminaries of some of the longer events needing to take place before the opening ceremony. The most recent example of this scenario took place during the 2022 Winter Olympics when the curling mixed doubles first round preliminaries commenced two days before the opening ceremony.The last opening ceremony to be held during daylight hours was that of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. CBS held the broadcasting rights for the United States and demanded that the opening ceremony coincide with prime-time television viewing in New York, so the ceremony, which had originally been planned for the evening, was rescheduled to start at 11:00 am local time. However, these changes facilitated a grand finale which, for the first time in history, featured a live and synchronized performance by six international choirs, linked to the venue via satellite. It was a performance of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", and the locations included the Sydney Opera House, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the UN General Assembly Building in New York City.
Artistic programme
The artistic programme provides the idiosyncratic element of the opening ceremony. Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin's initial vision for the modern Olympics featured both athletic competitions and artistic achievements. As the modern Olympics has evolved into a celebration of sport, it is the opening ceremony that most clearly exhibits Coubertin's overall ideal.The host nation has the freedom to comprehensively showcase its past, present and future through the artistic programme, which serves as an international platform for the host to promote its national identity, soft power and global image, through a blend of tradition, innovation and political symbolism. All protocols, artistic presentations, elements and rituals included in the opening ceremony must be approved by the IOC Executive Board.
In accordance with current Olympic protocol, the opening ceremony typically begins with the entrance of the host nation's head of state and the president of the IOC, followed by the raising of the host nation's flag and the performance of its national anthem. The host then presents artistic displays of music, singing, dance and theater representative of its culture, its history, and the current Olympic motto. This is a unique opportunity for the host nation to promote itself among the thousands of spectators who will be following the Games. Since the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, the artistic presentations have continued to grow in scale and complexity. The 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, for example, reportedly cost US$100 million, much of that cost incurred in the artistic portion of the ceremony.
The host's organizing committee selects the theme that will be incorporated into the various elements of the opening ceremony, including the artistic programme. For example, the theme for the 2008 Beijing Olympics was "Unity in China". On 12 May 2008, only four months before the start of the Games, a devastating earthquake occurred in Sichuan. Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming—chosen to be China's flagbearer at the opening ceremony—entered the stadium hand-in-hand with Lin Hao, a nine-year-old boy who had rescued some of his classmates following the earthquake.
The 2024 artistic programme stirred controversy and drew criticism from some religious groups. According to Newsweek, the groups contended that the performance "appeared to reflect the Last Supper, invoking sacred Christian imagery with dancers, drag queens, and a DJ in poses that resembled Jesus Christ's final meal with His Apostles." Theater director Thomas Jolly responded that his plan was for a "big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus" and not to mock anyone. The organizers of the show apologized to those offended by the "tableau that evoked Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Last Supper'" but defended the ideas behind it. The Olympic World Library later published the media guide which mentioned the performance being a homage to cultural festivities, and according to the Georgian fact-checking website, Myth Detector, many experts had pointed out the differences between the fresco and the segment.
Parade of Nations
The Olympic Charter determines that the opening ceremony must contain a protocolar segment called the "Parade of Nations", during which most of the participating athletes march into the stadium, one delegation at a time. It is not compulsory for the athletes to participate in the parade; as it is common for some events of the Games to start before the opening ceremony, any athletes competing in those early events may elect not to march with their team. Each delegation is led by a sign showing the name of their National Olympic Committee and by their flagbearer, who is typically a notable athlete of that delegation. Both men and women can be appointed to this honor, although female athletes only began to consistently appear as flagbearers from 1952 onwards, and despite increasing inclusion over the years they were outnumbered by their male counterparts on all occasions until Tokyo 2020. As an act of gender equality, beginning in 2020, the IOC has allowed the participating NOCs the option of having two flagbearers, one male and one female.The Parade of Nations was added to the Olympic Games opening ceremonies in 1908. Since the 1928 Summer Olympics, the team from Greece has traditionally entered first, leading the parade in recognition of their role in the ancient Olympic Games, and the host nation's team enters the stadium last. This practice was relaxed at the 1924, 1928, 1932 and 1960 opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, because Greece did not participate as well as the 2004 opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics, because the Games were hosted by Greece; the Greek flagbearer Pyrros Dimas led the parade on his own, followed by Saint Lucia, while the rest of the Greek team entered last. Beginning with the 2020 Olympics, the Refugee Olympic Team enters second, after Greece, and the parade ends with the host nations of the next two Olympic Games in descending order, as the final two teams before the host nation.
All of the remaining delegations enter the stadium after Greece and before the host nation, appearing in alphabetical order based on their NOC name in the host nation's official language. For example, the three Olympic Games held in Canada have used either English or French, as both are considered official languages of Canada and the IOC. At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, the delegations entered according to the French language protocol order, French being the city's first language. However, this was reversed at the Winter Olympics in 1988 and 2010 because English is the primary language in Calgary and Vancouver, respectively, so the English language protocol order was used. Cyrillic script was used at the 1980 Summer Olympics in the then-Soviet Union, the 1984 Winter Olympics in the then-Yugoslavia, and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia. The 2004 Summer Games in Greece used Modern Greek script.
Host nations whose official languages do not use Latin script—especially for Games held in Asia—have employed alternative collation methods for the Parade of Nations. At the 1988 Summer Olympics and the 2018 Winter Olympics, the NOCs were sorted by traditional Korean Hangul script; the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics ordered the NOCs by the number of strokes used to write the team name using Simplified Chinese characters; and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics used the Gojūon ordering of Japanese kana.
File:PyeongChang Olympic Opening Ceremony 14.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|The delegations of North Korea and South Korea march as one during the opening ceremony of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, which was hosted by South Korea.
There have been a number of exceptions to this practice. When the Games were held in Japan in 1964, 1972, and 1998, the organizers chose to use the English language protocol order because the use of Japanese grammar would cause certain IOC protocol rules to be broken, and this was considered a goodwill sign by Japanese society. National and internal questions led Spain to also make an exception during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, with consideration for the Catalan independence movement and concerns over the Spanish language gaining undue prominence over the Catalan language; all official announcements during the 1992 Games were initially made in French, followed by Spanish, Catalan, and English, and the team order for the Parade of Nations was based on the French names of the delegations.
The organizing committee for the 2024 Summer Olympics broke with the tradition of staging the opening ceremony in a stadium and instead took it to the city streets. The Parade of Nations was formed by a boat parade on the Seine, with cultural presentations staged along the route. This was part of the goal for the opening ceremony to be a public, non-ticketed event rather than being held in a traditional stadium setting. The protocolar acts were held at the Jardins du Trocadéro.