I'm Obsessed with the Olympics Opening Ceremony

I was nine years old during the summer of 1984, and the last thing I wanted to do was watch the opening ceremony for the Los Angeles Olympics on television. My family had one 29-inch Zenith Color TV set. The pageantry was on, and that’s what we were going to watch.

The Olympics that year were especially political, boycotted by the Soviet Union and 13 other Eastern Bloc countries and allies. The Games presented an opportunity for Ronald Reagan’s patriotic, sunlight-dappled America to show the world what democracy and capitalism could achieve. Over 90,000 people crammed into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on July 28th, and right as the opening ceremony was about to kick off, a man wearing a jet pack flew over the crowd for 20 seconds, wowing those in attendance and tens of millions of viewers.

That man was test pilot Bill Suitor, and he wore a high-tech-looking hydrogen peroxide-fueled device called the “rocket belt,” which was made by Bell Aerosystems. At that moment in human history, he was the coolest person who ever lived—or at least, that was the opinion of nine-year-old me. Once Suitor landed safely, I became forever hooked on the Olympic opening ceremony.

The rest of the event was pure Hollywood glitz, with thousands of dancers, dozens of grand pianos, and even Diana Ross. That was the year legendary movie composer John Williams wrote the Olympic Fanfare and Theme, a catchy piece of triumphant and elegant music. The Olympics still use it, and I’m seriously considering it as the processional music for my upcoming wedding.

The 2024 Summer Olympics will take place between July 26th and August 11th in Paris, France. Over those 16 days, 10,500 athletes will compete in 32 sports for 329 medals. All of it will be breathlessly broadcast by NBC over traditional TV and streaming.

A thrilling fireworks display kicked off the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo (Photo: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

All the classic sports will be represented at this year’s games: gymnastics, swimming, track and field. There are new sports, too, like kiteboarding and something called Kayakcross—where four kayakers elbow and jostle down a whitewater course for the gold medal.

But all I care about is the opening ceremony, which will air live at 1:30 P.M. EST on Friday, and will be rebroadcast on NBC at 7:30 P.M. EST that night. Every four years, this event gives me the chance to pump my fist and shout USA! USA! as I watch dozens of athletes, from all backgrounds and ethnicities and religions, sexual orientations and genders, wave little flags on their way to kick international ass.

I can’t wait. I want host nation France to show off its cultural and artistic side: mimes juggling baguettes, Moulin Rouge dancers performing the Cancan to techno covers of Offenbach’s Infernal Galop, a giant, inflatable Jean-Paul Sartre balloon. For the first time in history, boats will carry the world’s athletes down the Seine and towards the lighting of the Olympic Flame. I plan to watch every second.

The last few Summer Olympic ceremonies have been wonderful. In 2008, the Chinese pulled out all the stops: thousands of dancers, drummers, and martial artists performed underneath high-tech LED screens and firework displays.

Directed by Hollywood filmmaker Danny Boyle, the 2012 London Olympic Opening Ceremonies celebrated the UK’s history, as well as James Bond, The Rolling Stones, and the Queen. The country of Shakespeare put on a great show. It was Rio De Janeiro’s turn in 2016, and the Brazilian city embraced the Amazon, Favela music and dance, and supermodel Gisele Bündchen.

The most recent Olympic Opening Ceremonies, the 2020 games, were held in Tokyo a year later, in 2021, due to COVID-19. No spectators were present, but Japan and the athletes still gave it their all. The Opening Ceremonies were muted but defiant, celebrating Japan’s cultural heritage. Spectacles included a massive armada of drones forming a unified globe above the stadium to John Lennon’s Imagine.

We’re still not sure about the Olympic mascots from the 2020 winter Games in Beijing (Photo: Mao Jianjun/China News Service via Getty Images)

The Olympics is high-stakes stuff, a global mega-event that combines peak human physical and mental achievement with geopolitics. Since the first modern Olympics in 1896, in Athens, where the ancient games were born, the world has, more or less, paused to play instead of killing each other. There were years the games didn’t happen, and, as I mentioned, boycotts, but for the most part, every four years for 128 years, give or take, the nations of the world have agreed to settle their differences on the tennis court, or at the pommel horse, or in the boxing ring.

But the opening ceremony, to me, is the true spectacle: an emotional carnival that combines Cirque du Soleil with Broadway and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The 2008 opening ceremony is still considered one of the best in Olympics history (Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

It is a way for the host country to flex its cultural muscles and give the very best theater kids an opportunity to shine before the jocks step in and steal the spotlight. The Olympic Opening Ceremonies balance the intimacy of television with the stadium-sized pageantry of a Super Bowl Halftime show, the cheesiest possible “We Are The World’ pablum with a distinctly nationalist vibe.

When the U.S. athletes emerge to cheering crowds behind hundreds of other hopefuls from other countries, I get choked up. This year, as the Parade of Nations will consist of boats sailing down the river Seine in Paris. I love boats. I love the story the ceremony tells: no matter who you are, we all love a parade.

I will watch and pray fervently for someone with a jetpack to soar through the air. I know that won’t happen because I’ll never be nine years old again. And when John William’s rousing score blares, I will stand with my hand over my heart.