2004 Summer Olympics opening ceremony 2004 Summer Olympics opening ceremony The opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games was held on August 13, 2004 at the Olympic Stadium in Maroussi, Greece, a suburb of Athens. 72,000 spectators attended the event, with approximately 15,000 athletes from 202 countries participating in the ceremony as well. It marked the first-ever international broadcast of high definition television, undertaken by the U.S. broadcaster NBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK. The opening ceremony began with a twenty-eight second countdown—one second per Olympics held since Athens last hosted the first modern games—paced by the sounds of an amplified heartbeat played by
Olympic Athletes from Russia at the 2018 Winter Olympics Olympic Athletes from Russia at the 2018 Winter Olympics Olympic Athlete from Russia (OAR) is the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) designation of select Russian athletes permitted to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The designation was instigated following the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee after the Olympic doping controversy. This was the first time since the Unified Team of 1992 that Russian athletes had participated under the neutral Olympic flag. During the 2018 Winter Olympics, two athletes from this team tested positive for banned substances and were found guilty of doping by the Court of