Torch Relay and The Lighting of The Cauldron
The Opening Ceremony culminated in the end of the torch relay, a tradition begun when Berlin hosted the games in 1936. Before the torch came into the stadium, a three rings arose from the center of the stadium that simulated a globe. This segment preceding the torch's arrival honored the first global torch relay that was begun by Athens 2004. Actors, suspended on cables, started rising out of the crowd and ran towards the globe, carrying glowing sticks meant to simulate the Olympic torch. On the globe, the names of the cities which the torch visited were projected, and this segment ended with all the torchbearers floating mid-air coming together at the globe. After this segment ended, the lights were dimmed, and the sound of the heartbeat accompanied by thunderous cheers and applause met the torch's final arrival to the Olympic Stadium.
Torch bearer Nikos Galis, considered to be the greatest Greek basketball player of all time, entered the stadium first. The torch was passed on, in sequential order, to Greek football legend Mimis Domazos, 1992 Hurdles champion Voula Patoulidou, 1996 Olympic weightlifting champion Kakhi Kakhiashvili, and 1996 Olympic gymnastics champion Ioannis Melissanidis.
The torch was finally passed to the 1996 Olympic sailing champion Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, who lit a giant cigar-shaped tapered column resembling a torch—not, as usual, a cauldron—to burn during the duration of the 2004 Summer Olympics. As Kaklamanakis ascended the steps to light the cauldron, the cauldron seemed to bow down to him, symbolizing that despite advance of technology, technology is still a creation and tool of humanity and that it was meant to serve humanity's needs. The ceremony concluded with a breathtaking fireworks display.
Read more about this topic: 2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony
Famous quotes containing the words torch, lighting and/or cauldron:
“They shall beget and rear children, handing on the torch of life from one generation to another.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Popular art is normally decried as vulgar by the cultivated people of its time; then it loses favor with its original audience as a new generation grows up; then it begins to merge into the softer lighting of “quaint,” and cultivated people become interested in it, and finally it begins to take on the archaic dignity of the primitive.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whin’d.
Harper cries: ‘Tis time, ‘tis time.
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)