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
Olympic Games ceremony the Games of the II Olympiad in Paris in 1900, which had no opening ceremony before as part of the 1900 World's Fair. There are five examples from the United States alone in which the Games were not opened by the head of state. The Olympic Charter provides that the person designated to open the Games should do so by reciting whichever of the following lines is appropriate: Before 1936, the opening official would often make a short welcoming speech before declaring the Games open. However, since 1936, when Adolf Hitler opened both the Garmisch Partenkirchen Winter Olympics and the