Aditha DISSANAYAKE

Sir Steve Redgrave? Muhammad Ali? Queen Elizabeth? Who would light the Olympic flame at Olympic park on the opening night? If it is the Queen will she run up a flight of steep stairs like Rafer Johnson did in Los Angeles in 1984, or run around the roof of the stadium like Li Ning did at the previous Olympics held in Beijing? Last Friday the answer to the one big question which had been on everybody's lips for the past few weeks was finally revealed.

In front of 80,000 people who packed into the Olympic Stadium in London to witness the Opening Ceremony which had 15,000 performers, cost £27 million, and provided three hours of entertainment, the big secret was ultimately disclosed. The torch was lit, not by one, but many.

Undoubtedly for most of us who woke up at one in the morning on this side of the world, to watch the opening ceremony which began with a pair of cows, swaying into a patchwork of fields in the centre of the Olympic stadium in a recreation of the "green and pleasant land" of William Blake's Jerusalem, the show seemed slightly boring and sleep a far better option. Yet, those who were there to see the event in person said "perhaps it might have felt different to those watching on television, but in the stadium the mood was definitely electrifying."

Excitement

Perhaps. Perhaps those who stayed faithfully glued to their television to the last, would finally have caught the chemistry when a speedboat carried the Olympic torch on the final leg of its journey up the Thames, accompanied by David Beckham who handed it to Britain's greatest Olympian rower Steve Redgrave.

Redgrave then carried the torch into the stadium through a tunnel packed with some of the construction workers who built the stadium. For the grand finale, seven youngsters nominated by British Olympic heroes lit torches from each other and then simultaneously lit the cauldron - an enormous ring of copper petals

representing each nation. One flared, then another, until nearly 200 bursts of light rose on stalks and the fiery petals came together in one enormous flame. "This is for everyone," the electronic display said, capturing the team spirits of the Olympics to the very last ember.

As if to make up for those who felt disappointed the Queen was not the one who lit the Olympic torch a witty video was shown where the Queen appeared to parachute from a helicopter into the arena alongside Daniel Craig, also known as James Bond. The short film was called, "Happy and Glorious," and opened with Bond arriving at Buckingham Palace.

He walks into the Queen's private rooms to find her sitting at a desk. She turns to him and says, "Good evening, Mr. Bond." Then they climb into a helicopter, which is shown flying under Tower Bridge in a stunt filmed a month ago, before they appear to parachute into the stadium. (Stuntmen, of course, take the place of Craig and the Queen for the final descent.)

Celebrations

According to critic Cole Morton who was inside the stadium "We heard the sound of a real helicopter above our heads and looked up to see a pair of red, white and blue parachutes falling slowly, one with a man in a familiar dinner jacket and the other supporting a lady of a certain age in a long peach dress. And then - moments after her stunt double had landed in the Olympic Park - the Queen appeared in person in exactly the same dress."

Commending Danny Boyle, of Slum-dog Millionaire fame who was the mastermind behind the opening ceremony, for the dizzying act of celebration of the past and future, Morton also praises Boyle for persuading even her Majesty to take to acting for the first time in her life to film the comedy sketch at Buckingham Palace specially for the 2012 Olympics.

Yet, in spite of the magic and majesty as is the case in almost every Olympics, much of the speculation around the London Olympics too centered on how Britain could possibly surpass the previous summer host, China. In 2008, Beijing used its awe-inspiring opening extravaganza to proclaim in no uncertain terms as one critic notes "that it (China) was here, it was rich, and the world better get used to it."

As Anthony Lane says in his essay on the Olympics in the New Yorker the artistic director, Danny Boyle, is a film director by trade, like Zhang Yimou, who was assigned the same task of directing the previous Olympics in Beijing.

"The results could not have been more different" notes Lane. "If 2008 was a demonstration of more or less benign power-the power of numbers, apart from anything else, and, given enough humans to play with, the power of fearful symmetry-then 2012 was an exercise in the tolerant taming of disorder."

With the participation of 205 nations, 10,500 Olympic athletes, 4000 Paralympics athletes, 70,000 volunteers watched by spectators from all over the world, the London Olympics 2012, is the third time the city is hosting the great Games. The two previous games were held in London in 1908 and 1948. In comparison to the spectacular opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, the 1948 Olympics, which took place amid postwar rationing, were, to quote a journalist who wrote to the New Yorker from London at the time, "Spartan as well as Greek." Britain was so poor then that it housed its athletes in old army barracks, made them bring their own towels and erected no buildings for the Games. The Olympics cost less than £750,000, turned a small profit and made the nation proud that it had managed to rise to the occasion in the face of such adversity.(Germany and Japan were not invited; the Soviet Union did not attend.)In contrast, such was the grandeur of 2012, 80,000 people sat comfortably in the new Olympic Park which, after the Games have finished, will become one of the largest parks created within Europe in more than 150 years.

Yet, the very first Olympics too had humble beginnings. The ancient Games had only a few events. Foot racing was in every game and each race had a variety of lengths - the longest being the marathon. Boxing was one of the oldest events as well as throwing the javelin, wrestling, and chariot racing. The idea was to have the best athletes from all over Greece gather in one field and compete every four years. According to Keith Landry in his essay The Olympic Games, all wars and fighting had to stop while the athletes and their supporters came together in the town of Olympia for a few days to compete in the few events, mostly related to warfare. The only reward the winner received was a simple crown of olive leaves to wear on his head.

The Olympics' official motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius". This is Latin for "Swifter, Higher, Stronger" and is said to represent the Olympic spirit, supposed to be prevail throughout the Games and generally held to be a celebration of brotherhood, competition, sportsmanship, goodwill and peace. "The Games help us see how similar we are, and help us celebrate our humanity," says Landry.

The five rings that appear on the Olympic flag (coloured yellow, green, blue, black and red) were introduced in 1914. They represent the five continents of Africa, the Americas, Australia, Asia and Europe. According to the Historical Dictionary of the Olympic Movement the rings were supposedly chosen because "at least one of these colors can be found in the flag of every nation."

The Olympic flag that was raised at the Opening Ceremony and will fly over the main stadium during the Games dates back to the 1980s.

The original five-ringed flag first flew at the Antwerp Games in 1920 and was passed to the mayor of the next host city at the end of the games. That flag was known as the "Antwerp Flag."

By 1984, the flag was tattered, so a replacement was produced out of fine Korean silk and first flown at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

The Olympic flag is closely guarded and legally protected. But it has also been the target of a variety of pranks. In 1920, Hal Prieste, an American diver, was challenged by the Hawaiian swimmer and Olympic teammate, Duke Kahanamoku, to climb up a 15-foot flagpole and steal an Olympic flag. Eighty years later, Prieste returned the stolen flag to the International Olympic Committee's president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, at the Sydney Games.

The Olympic torch, a major part of the ancient Games, was brought back into the modern games in 1928 and is carried with great fanfare and publicity to the host city where it lights the burning flame of the Games. It is kept burning until the close of the Games. The torch symbolizes purity, the drive for perfection and the struggle for victory.

By the time you are reading this the 2012 Olympics would have reached its sixth day. Some of the athletes, would already have fulfilled their dreams, others might have found their hopes slipping from their grasp, sometimes by a mere fraction of a second. But for all of us watching, the Games are undoubtedly a galvanizing display of talent, inspiration and endurance. They symbolize humanity's capacity to engage in friendly competition. For, as the father of the modern Games, Baron Pierre de Courbertin, once said:

The Games are the "quadrennial celebration of the springtime of humanity. Olympism is not a system, it is a state of mind... exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body... and will."

"Citius, Altius, Fortius", to the end.

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