Olympic Times - Sports Daily

BEIJING (Reuters) - The Beijing Games opening ceremony set a very high standard and Vancouver, hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, has its work cut out to follow it, its Games chief said on Saturday.
Speaking a day after the Games opened in Beijing with a four-hour extravaganza that won rave reviews around the world, Vancouver chief John Furlong said his ceremonies’ team had already started thinking of ways to rise to the challenge.
“I was mesmerized. I could have stayed in the stadium all night,” Furlong told Reuters in an interview.
“I had the time of my life and I had said before that people would have great difficulty to find the words and that was a pretty accurate assessment.”
A spectacle of sight and sound, the Beijing Games ceremony featured colorful dances, tightly choreographed drumming and barrages of fireworks captivating 91,000 spectators in the Bird’s Nest stadium and TV viewers around the world alike.
“It was remarkable. I think we saw a new horizon,” said Furlong who will not have the $100 million to spend, which the Chinese dished out, on his Games’ opening event.
The Vancouver Olympics come with a novelty though. It will be the first time the opening and closing ceremonies will be held indoors, at the BC Place stadium in downtown Vancouver.
“We have a controlled environment,” Furlong said. “It is a stadium that has been tested and our team is great and dreaming has already started.”
Winter Games are a much smaller affair than the Summer Olympics but Canada is one of the natural homes for winter sports.
Gone is the international torch relay that caused Beijing considerable headaches in the run-up to the Games, as human rights protests peppered the flame’s trip across the world.
Canada will hold only a domestic relay to “bring the Games to every Canadian”.
“The opening ceremony will be a truly Canadian story told by Canadians,” Furlong said.

from: reuters.com