2004 Summer Olympics opening ceremony the Opening Ceremonies, for example in the last Olympics before that, in Salt Lake City, where banners of the previous 18 Winter Olympics entered Rice-Eccles Stadium at the beginning of the ceremony. This would also be seen in Vancouver during the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics and on the Televised version of the Olympic Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The first speech came from Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the chief organizer of the Athens 2004 Olympics and the first female chief organizer of an Olympic games. She told the athletes: "Welcome home!" and "Greece is standing before
2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony watched Olympic Opening Ceremony ever held in a non-U.S. city by an American audience, a record previously held by the Lillehammer Games of 1994. It was the biggest television event in the U.S. in 2008 since the Super Bowl, and it also surpassed the ratings for the 2008 Academy Awards ceremony and that year's finale of "American Idol". In the United States, NBC concluded its broadcast with a message saying that their coverage of the opening ceremony was dedicated in memory of Jim McKay, longtime Olympics broadcaster with rival ABC, who died on 7 June. ABC "loaned" McKay to NBC