The opening ceremony was televised on NBC and started at 6:55am.. The first segment is athletes preparing for the Tokyo 2021 games and then shows what the athletes did to train during the pandemic. Starting to train.. stopping training and or training alone and then starting training again because of the pandemic.
The next segment was connecting the dots.. connecting the human body and heart. Followed by the Japanese Flag entering the stadium, then a first, there was a moment of silence in honor of the 11 Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich games.
A sampling of Japanese culture was next. There was a segment of Japanese carpentry signaling- building an Olympics- 1964 to 2021. The wooden Olympic rings were then formed as the performers were dancing
The parade of nations was next. The countries walked in the order of the Japanese alphabet. Greece was first, IOC Refugee Team was second. The USA was third to last followed by France, who was second to last and Japan was the final country to enter the stadium.
Italy has 386 athletes with 62 million population. Great Britain has 391 athletes with a population of 67 million. Australia has 494 athletes with a population of 25 million. Canada has 386 athletes with a population of 37 million. ROC has 344 athletes with 142 million population. Spain has 338 athletes with a population of 47 million. China has 429 athletes with 1.4 billion population. Germany has 428 athletes with a population of 80 million. The USA has 613 athletes with 335 million population. France has 404 athletes with a population of 68 million and Japan has 631 athletes with a population of 124 million.
NBC interviewed Megan Rapinoe and Lilly King during segments of the parade of nations. Also NBC live interviewed USA flagbearers Sue Bird and Eddy Alvarez as they were walking in the stadium.
A new Olympic motto was revealed. Faster, Higher, Stronger, Together..
Then there was a segment involving boxes that when rearranged spell out Tokyo 2020.
Then, a first for any Olympics Opening Ceremony, 1800 drones formed the planet earth above the Olympic stadium while the song "Imagine" was sung by singers on 5 continents including Keith Urban of New Zealand and USA singer John Legend.
Then Tokyo 2020 Olympic Committee President Seiko Hashimoto spoke on the challenges of holding the games during Covid 19. Hashimoto spoke only in Japanese and NBC had to translate it to English. Then IOC President Thomas Bach spoke, followed by Japan's Emperor Naruhito declared the games open and the Olympic flag soon entered the stadium and was raised. Next high tech doves were flying around the Olympic Stadium.
After each segment fireworks were shown going off at the top of the Olympic stadium.
The next segment involved Japanese artists portraying pictograms of all past Olympics and of all 41 Olympic Sports, totaling 50 pictograms. This was followed by an introduction to Tokyo.
The next segment was a funny video skit by Japanese comedian Hitori Gedikan on the lighting of all of the venues in Tokyo and in the Olympic stadium as he was turning on switches to lights as like an experiment.
Japanese Jazz artist Hiromi Uehara performed next followed by a video of the 2020 Tokyo Torch Relay, then it goes live as the flame enters the stadium. The flame was carried by Japanese wrestler Saori Yoshida and Japanese Judo athlete Tadahiro Nomura who handed it off to Japanese baseball stars Sahaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima and Hideki Matsui who handed it off to a Japanese nurse Junko Kitagowa and Japanese doctor Hiroki Ohashi who then both handed the torch off to Japanese wheelchair racer Wakako Tsuchida who passed the torch to 6 Fukushima students affected by the 2011 earthquake who then passed the torch to Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka who climbed the stage of Mount Fuji to light the cauldron.
That concluded NBC's coverage of the Opening Ceremony which ended at 11 am eastern time.
NBC's coverage of the live version was better than the taped version of Rio 2016 opening ceremony. Commercials were about every 11-12 minutes. Several commercial breaks showed live coverage while the commercials were airing. Mike Tirico and Savannah Guthrie hosted the opening ceremony and did a good job. The biggest thing I noticed was there was probably 30 percent of the athletes that are normally there. Lots of spacing. Looked like just a few thousand athletes that took part in the ceremony, instead of the 11,000 athletes that normally take part. Very high tech opening ceremony highlighted by the 1800 drones which formed planet earth high above the stadium.
Photos credit: Getty Images, UPI and other media sources. For blog use only.
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