02/06/26 02:29:00
Printable Page
02/06 14:27 CST Some Olympic athletes skip Milan's opening ceremony and march
in the mountains
Some Olympic athletes skip Milan's opening ceremony and march in the mountains
By HOWARD FENDRICH
AP National Writer
MILAN (AP) --- Featuring tributes to da Vinci and Dante, Puccini and Pausini,
Armani and Fellini, pasta and vino, and other iconic tastes of Italian culture
--- plus Mariah Carey hitting all the high notes in "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu"
aka "Volare" --- an unprecedented four-site, dual-cauldron opening ceremony got
the Milan Cortina Olympics officially started Friday.
Allowing athletes to participate in the Parade of Nations at the mountain
locales for the most spread-out Winter Games in history created what perhaps
was an unintended consequence: Zero competitors from any of the first five
countries actually showed up at the main hub, Milan's San Siro soccer stadium.
While signs bearing the names of Greece, Albania, Andorra, Saudi Arabia and
Argentina were carried into the home of Serie A soccer titans AC Milan and
Inter Milan, there were no athletes from those places around: Instead, they
were participating at simultaneous festivities held at Cortina d'Ampezzo in the
heart of the Dolomites, Livigno in the Alps, and Predazzo in the autonomous
province of Trento.
For good measure, the Feb. 22 closing ceremony will be held in yet another
locale, Verona, where Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" was set.
The full collection of competition venues for the next two-plus weeks dot an
area of about 8,500 square miles (more than 22,000 square kilometers), roughly
the size of the entire state of New Jersey. The multi-city ceremony format
Friday allowed up-in-the-mountains sports such as Alpine skiing, bobsled,
curling and snowboarding to be represented without requiring folks to make the
several-hours-long trek to Milan, the country's financial capital.
So some chose not to.
The first country with athletes at San Siro was Armenia --- and their entrance
drew raucous cheers from a sellout crowd of 61,000.
Plenty had been kept under wraps by organizers who said they sought to convey
themes of harmony and peace, seeking to represent the city-mountain dichotomy
of the particularly unusual setup for these Olympics while also trying to
appeal to a sense of unity at a time of global tensions.
Another unknown: What sort of reception would U.S. Vice President JD Vance get
when he attended the ceremony in Milan? And what about the American athletes,
who were scheduled to be among the final ones to take part because the next
Games will be hosted by Los Angeles in 2028?
When new International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry was asked
this week what sort of greeting the U.S. delegation would get when they enter
San Siro in the Parade of Nations, she replied: "I hope the opening ceremony is
seen by everyone as an opportunity to be respectful."
Another symbol of how far-flung things are this time: Instead of the usual one
cauldron that is lit and burns throughout the Olympics, there will be two, both
intended as an homage to Leonardo da Vinci's geometric studies. One is in
Milan, 2 miles (4 kilometers) from San Siro, and the other is going to be 250
miles (400 kilometers) away in Cortina.
The people given the honor of lighting both following a ceremony expected to
last 2 1/2 hours was a closely guarded secret, as is usually the case at any
Olympics. At the 2006 Turin Games, it was Italian cross-country skier Stefania
Belmondo.
It didn't exactly feel like a Winter Games in Milan, where the temperature was
a tad below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius), and the sky was a
crisp, clear azure all afternoon Friday. Not a trace of clouds, let alone snow.
As Italy welcomed the world by displaying symbols of its heritage, the show
produced by Olympic ceremony veteran Marco Balich began with dancers from the
academy of the famed Milan opera house Teatro alla Scala reimagining
18th-century sculptor Antonio Canova's marble works.
People wearing oversized, mascot-style heads representing opera composers
Giacomo Puccini, Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi appeared on the central
stage, before giant paint tubes floated above and dropped silk of red, blue and
yellow --- the primary colors --- before an early parade of
various-color-wearing characters arrived in the stadium. They represented music
and art, literature and architecture, appreciations for beauty and history and,
above all, "La Dolce Vita" (loosely, Italian for "The Good Life" and the name
of a 1960 film by Federico Fellini).
There were references to ancient Rome, the Renaissance, the Venice Carnival and
the country's noted traditions in various areas such as cuisine and literature,
such as "Pinocchio" and Dante's "Inferno."
A runway walk showcased outfits --- created by the late fashion designer
Giorgio Armani, who died last year at 91 --- in the colors of Italy's flag:
red, green and white. And balladeer Laura Pausini sang Italy's national anthem.
Carey got loud cheers in Milan as she sang in Italian. In Cortina, hundreds of
fans sang along with her, and a roar emerged when they realized she was
performing the song with the "Volare" refrain.
Another local touch: Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore, of "White Lotus"
fame, was to introduce a section that took viewers through a century of past
Olympics, with examples of evolving equipment, sportswear and music. And
actress and comedian Brenda Lodigiani was invited to demonstrate the popular
Italian hand gestures often used to communicate in place of words.
___
Associated Press writer Colleen Barry contributed to this report.
___
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
|
