Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies. Myles Garcia
announced they would spend the leftover $75 million from the 2016 run; Madrid dropped its bid budget to (est.) $33 million. Rome and Durban, South Africa, once considered the frontunners, dropped out altogether when the overall economic picture demanded it.
*The above are outright figures which do not include donated goods and services from city departments and countless man-hours extracted from volunteers and interns. In addition, hard-core supporters pay their own way to go to the selection city (e.g., 180 Atlantans flew to Tokyo in 1990; 300 Chicagoans chartered a jet to Copenhagen 2009; over 100 Munich supporters flew to Durban for the 2018 vote) as “unofficial” cheering sections of the various delegations. Their out-of-pocket costs are usually not counted in a bid’s generic costs but can certainly add up. The Chicago 2016 junket was priced at $3,500 per person--so with 300 people, the whole cost of the expedition came to over $1,050,000.
As this edition was going to press, the IOC had finally taken notice of the prohibitively costly manner of bidding. For starters, it imposed severe restrictions on the 2020 candidate cities on promoting their bids in London 2012 and similar events. Now if it would only allow the delegates to actually visit the candidate cities again, perhaps some sanity could be restored to the process.
What are Ceremonies?
Ceremonies are rituals. Since the dawn of man, our species has used rituals to mark an event in life–a passage, a celebration. From the gathering of primitive man around a fire to celebrate a hunt, to a rain dance of tribes, to a baptism or a simple wedding in some remote village, to a centennial or a statue, or the victory in some conflict or struggle, humans have chosen to mark milestones in their life with some sort of ritual.
The Ancient Games. Since the original Olympic Games of Antiquity were celebrated as a religious festival with the athletic competition as a sideshow, it is difficult to determine what constituted pomp for pageantry’s sake and what was religious ritual. But it is known that there was some sort of torch/cauldron-burning and that the athletic victors were awarded at least with crowns of wild olive leaves.
The Modern Games. In 1894, a French nobleman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, revived the idea of the Olympic Games. In the 1880s, de Coubertin was dismayed at the state of sport and French public education. In Great Britain, the United States and Germany, France’s greatest rival at the time, he saw that sport was intertwined with education and the results on their youth. He didn’t see that in the upcoming French generation. Thus, de Coubertin seized upon the idea of reviving the ancient Olympic Games in an industrialized world. At a convocation he organized at the Sorbonne University in 1894, with delegates from nine nations in attendance, de Coubertin put forth the idea of a revived Olympic Games with such conviction that the delegates unanimously agreed and even did him one better.
Coubertin originally hoped to have the renewal of the Olympic Games coincide with the Paris International Exposition of 1900 and the start of the twentieth century. But the enthusiasm of the delegates for his idea could not be contained; they outvoted him to hold the revived Games in 1896 in Athens, Greece rather than wait for Paris 1900. Thus was born the Olympic Games of the Modern Era.
For the modern Olympics, the IOC Charter has, of late (the Charter terminology gets revised every few years) hinted that Organizing Committees are “… encouraged to highlight some aspect of their national culture in the Artistic portions of the Opening Ceremony…”
Each Olympic Games literally closes its books when it presents a final report to the IOC months after the closing ceremony. Those final reports are multi-volume books called The Official Report of the __th Games of (City here…) and contain a detailed summary of all the salient points of the organization of those Games. Following is an excerpt from the Official Report of Munich 1972 describing what an Olympic Opening should be (parenthethicals are author’s views):
“First of all the Organizing Committee (OC) applied itself to the Opening Ceremony: The ceremony served as an introduction to the Games. Its staging influenced the total style of the following Olympic days.
(Section) 5.4.1 The Conception of the Opening Ceremony Guidelines. The ceremonial of the opening celebration is regulated in great detail by the IOC Statutes. There was little leeway left to the organizers of the Olympic Games for original ideas and initiative. Nevertheless, the OC tried to embody the guidelines of the Munich games in the traditional ceremonial. The opening ceremony was to appear neither religious, military, nationalistic, nor overly pompous. (Ha!) Instead it was intended to be spontaneous and light and to establish rapport between the performers in the arena and the audience on the tiers. Means to this end were:
-strong visual effects, carefully tested for their effectiveness.
-symbolic actions, their meaning easily recognized.
-commonly appreciated and suitable music.
The IOC had to approve all changes in the ceremonial. However, the OC did not want to submit details bit by bit, but rather presented a completely thought out and unified total concept.
The following also shows Opening and Closing Ceremony staging particulars as spelled out in the IOC Charter. The section below is from the 1980 version prescribing that (for the Summer Games) “…the athletes must leave the infield after all the Protocol portions have been satisfied…”--and only then may the ‘artistic programme’ take place or continue. The rule for an exception immediately follows:
XV. TO RULE 63
Opening ceremony
The sovereign or Head of State who has been invited to open the Olympic Games shall be received at the entrance of the stadium by the President of the IOC and by the President of the OCOG. The two Presidents shall conduct the sovereign or Head of State and his retinue to his box at the stand of honour where he shall be greeted with his anthem.
The parade of the participants shall then follow. Each delegation dressed in its official uniform must be preceded by a name-board bearing its name and must be accompanied by its flag.
No participant in the parade is permitted to carry cameras, flags, banners, etc., on the field during the opening and closing ceremonies. Any participant committing a breach of the above regulations, will be liable to sanctions according to Rule 23. The OCOG shall see that these provisions are carried out.
[See last paragraph above: No participant in the parade is permitted to carry cameras, flags or banners, etc. on the field during the opening and closing ceremonies. Of course, they should have added: “…no chewing gum, camera-hugging or mugging either.”] It continues…
The contingent shall parade in alphabetical order according to the language of the country organising the Olympic Games, except that Greece shall lead the parade and the organizing country shall bring up the read. Only those who are competing in the Olympic Games, and no more than four non-competitors in each delegation, shall parade.
The delegations shall salute the sovereign or Head of State of the country by turning their heads toward his box, with no other demonstration. The flags of the participating delegations, as well as the name-boards and their bearers, shall be furnished by the OCOG and shall all be of equal size. Each contingent, after completing its march around the stadium, shall line up in the center of the field and maintain its position in a column behind its name-board and flag facing the stand of honour.
The President of the OCOG, accompanied by the President of the IOC, shall then proceed to the rostrum placed in the field in front of the stand of honour where he shall introduce the President of the IOC in the following words:
“I have the honour to introduce . . ., President of the International Olympic Committee, to whom I extend the warmest welcome.”
The President of the IOC shall then mount the rostrum, and deliver a brief speech of welcome, of not more than three minutes, concluding with the words:
“I have the honour to invite . . . (the sovereign or Head of State) to proclaim open the Games of the . . . Olympiad of the modern era, initiated by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1896 (or of the . . . Olympic Winter Games).”
A symbolic release of pigeons precedes the