Jan. 27, 2006
 
WINTER OLYMPICS: Awesome Opening
 
By Geoff Calkins
Scripps Howard News Service
 
Salt Lake City, UT (SHNS) -- At 8:05 p.m., as a soft snow began to fall, eight American athletes walked slowly into Rice-Eccles Stadium holding a tattered American flag.
 
Kristina Sabasteanski held a corner. She's a member of the U.S biathalon team. She's also a soldier.
 
Lea Ann Parsley held a corner. She's a member of the U.S. skeleton team. She's also a firefighter.
 
Angela Ruggiero held a corner. She's a member of the U.S. women's hockey team. She's also a close friend of Kathleen Kauth, a hockey player who didn't make the team, whose father was killed in the World Trade Center attacks.
 
These and five others held the flag -- proudly, gingerly -- as it flapped in the winter breeze.
 
A military chopper circled overhead.
 
A second American flag was hoisted into place.
 
The Mormon Tabernacle choir sang the national anthem as sweetly, as gently, as it may ever have been sung.
 
Watching the moment unfold, seeing the flag outlined against the Olympic rings, it was impossible to believe there was ever a fuss about this. "The temperature here is in the 20's," said NBC's Bob Costas. "But that's not the cause of the goosebumps now."
 
The curtain went up on the 19th Winter Olympics Friday night. It was something to see.
 
There were billowing buffalo on sticks. There were covered wagons, too. It was Holiday on Ice meets Annie Oakley meets the Orange Bowl halftime show. But it was redeemed by the start. It was redeemed by a simple piece of cloth.
 
If Muhammed Ali was the star of the 1996 opening ceremony, if Cathy Freeman was the star of the 2000 opening ceremony, the star of the 2002 opening ceremony was the American flag dug from the rubble of The World Trade Center.
 
Those who said it had no place in the ceremony must have been humbled by its presence.
 
Those who initially banned it from the night must have been glad they lost the fight.
 
This was not about boastfulness. This was not about showing the world we're better than everyone else.
 
This was about resilience. This was about showing the world we're hanging in there, still.
 
"It means something to Americans," said figure skater Michelle Kwan, who had missed her two previous opening ceremonies, but said she wouldn't have missed this one for the world. "It means more than it once did." Yes. It does. And that's why the concerns about ugly Americanism overcoming these Olympics were misplaced.
 
Two years ago, four years ago, the ceremony might have felt overdone. But the world has changed. The Olympics have changed. Snipers line rooftops. Cops and soldiers outnumber athletes 5 to 1. Picabo Street, the daughter of hippies, competes a picture of the Statue of Liberty painted on her helmet. America is vulnerable. The games are vulnerable, too. And nothing captures that vulnerability -- nor the resolute response -- more perfectly than that beaten up American flag.
 
None of this means Americans should be rude to our guests. None of this means Sept. 11 has to overshadow the entire games. If you saw Sasha Cohen gleefully passing her cell phone to President Bush, you understand that. But on this first night, the people who run the Winter Olympics got it exactly right. It was enough to give you chills.
 
Contact Geoff Calkins of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., at http://www.gomemphis.com