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
2014 Winter Paralympics opening ceremony Alexander Petrov. Tchaikovsky's "Sugar Plum Fairy" and an homage to ice fishing were among the performances. Many of the show's 2500 performers were disabled, including singer Yuliya Samoylova who led the choir in a performance of "Together". During the March of Nations, athletes entered from a central ramp, just as in the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Soviet-era rock music played as the nations alphabetically (in the Russian alphabet) paraded through a "forest" of 204 light poles. Ukraine was represented by a single athlete carrying their flag to represent the 23-person team in an apparent protest to the