Olive branches..........majors and above.......field officers.......can wear a wreath on their hats.................the Marines who raised our flag on Iwo Jima..........is not all that different than the 3 countries who stand on the podium......bronze, silver and gold...........bronze......like copper ......on our coins?  The treasury dept.......................gold........the old standard.......where b the gold??

Olympic Games ceremony

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Olympic Games ceremonies of the Ancient Olympic Games were an integral part of these Games; the modern Olympic games have opening, closing, and medal ceremonies. Some of the elements of the modern ceremonies harken back to the Ancient Games from which the Modern Olympics draw their ancestry. An example of this is the prominence of Greece in both the opening and closing ceremonies. During the 2004 Games, the medal winners received a crown of olive branches, which was a direct reference to the Ancient Games, in which the victor's prize was an olive wreath. The various elements of the ceremonies are mandated by the Olympic Charter, and cannot be changed by the host nation. This requirement of seeking the approval of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) includes the artistic portion of opening and closing ceremonies.
The ceremonies have evolved over the centuries. Ancient Games incorporated ceremonies to mark the beginning and ending of each successive game. There are both similarities and differences between the ancient Olympic ceremonies and their modern counterparts. While the presentation of the Games has evolved with improvements in technology and the desire of the host nations to showcase their own artistic expression, the basic events of each ceremony have remained unchanged. The presentation of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies continue to increase in scope, scale, and expense with each successive celebration of the Games, but they are still steeped in tradition. The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organisers propose that the opening and closing ceremonies will each, for the first time, be staged across two different stadiums.^[1]

Contents

• 1 Ancient forerunners
• 2 Opening
  • 2.1 Artistic program
  • 2.2 Parade of Nations
  • 2.3 Traditional events
  • 2.4 Olympic flame
  • 2.5 Doves
• 3 Medal presentation
• 4 Closing
• 5 References

Ancient forerunners

The Ancient Games, held in Greece from ca. 776 BC to ca. 393 AD,^[2] provide the first examples of Olympic ceremonies. The victory celebration, elements of which are in evidence in the modern-day medal and closing ceremonies, often involved elaborate feasts, drinking, singing, and the recitation of poetry. The wealthier the victor the more extravagant the celebration.^[3] The victors were presented with an olive wreath or crown harvested from a special tree in Olympia by a boy, specially selected for this purpose, using a golden sickle.^[3] The festival would conclude with the victors making solemn vows and performing ritual sacrifices to the various gods to which they were beholden.^[3]
There is evidence of dramatic changes in the format of the Ancient Games over the nearly 12 centuries that they were celebrated. Eventually, by roughly the 77th Olympiad, a standard 18-event program was established.^[4] In order to open a Games in ancient Greece the organizers would hold an Inauguration Festival. This was followed by a ceremony in which athletes took an oath of sportsmanship. The first competition, an artistic competition of trumpeters and heralds, concluded the opening festivities.^[4]

Opening

A scene from the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics.

As per tradition, the team from Greece leads the Parade of Nations during the opening ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

The lighting of the cauldron during the opening ceremony of the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics.

The delegations of North and South Korea march as one during the opening ceremony of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics.

The Olympic opening ceremonies represent the official commencement of an Olympic Games. In recent Olympics, athletic competition began prior to the opening ceremonies. For example, the football competitions for both men and women at the 2008 Summer Olympics began two days prior to the opening ceremonies.^[5] The 2014 Winter Olympics then became the first Winter Games to hold competitions before the opening ceremony.^[6]
As mandated by the Olympic Charter, various elements frame the Opening Ceremonies of a celebration of the Olympic Games.^[7][8] Most of these rituals were canonized at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.^[9]

Artistic program

The artistic program is what creates the idiosyncratic element of each ceremony.^[10] Coubertin's initial vision of the Modern Olympics featured both athletic competitions and artistic achievements.^[11] As the modern Olympics have evolved into a celebration of sport, it is in the opening ceremonies that one can see the most of Coubertin's ideal. The opening ceremonies are an important ritual of the Olympic games that represent a wide variety of features such as similar qualities and messages that link together local and global issues, as well as cultural similarities at the same scopes.^[12] The artistic program of the ceremonies allows the host country to showcase its past and future in a comprehensive way.^[12] The ceremonies typically start with the raising of the host country's flag and a performance of its national anthem.^[7][8] The host nation then presents artistic displays of music, singing, dance, and theater representative of its culture, history, and the current Olympic game motto.^[9] Since the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, the artistic presentations have continued to grow in scale and complexity. The opening ceremony at the Beijing Games, for example, reportedly cost US$100 million, with much of the cost incurring in the artistic portion of the ceremony.^[13]

Parade of Nations

The traditional part of the ceremonies starts with a "Parade of Nations", during which most participating athletes march into the stadium, country by country. It is not compulsory for athletes to participate in the opening ceremonies. Because some of the first events of the Games may start on the day before, on the day, or the day after the ceremonies, athletes competing in these early events may elect not to participate.
For every Opening Ceremony, each host country has a theme. During the "Parade of Nations", the host country’s goal is to represent their cultural identity and to show the world their place in society. For example, in the 2008 Beijing Olympics the theme was “unity”. On May 12, 2008, a devastating earthquake erupted in Sichuan. As the host country, China wanted to remember this tragic event by having Yao Ming, a Chinese basketball legend, walk hand-in-hand with Lin Hao, a nine-year-old boy who saved some of his classmates during the earthquake.^[12]
Each country's delegation is led by a sign with the name of their country and by their nation's flag.^[7][8] Traditionally, Greece always enters first and leads the parade due to the historical status as the progenitor of the Olympics, and the host nation enters last.^[9][14] All other participating teams enter after Greece and before the host nation, in order according to a language selected by the organizing committee for those games, which is usually the dominant language in the area of the host city. Announcers announce each country's name in English, French and the dominant language of the area of the host city, if neither English nor French is the dominant language.
In the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the Greek flag led the parade, while the Greek team entered last, as the host nation; Saint Lucia (Αγία Λουκία in Greek) then entered first. In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, both Spanish and Catalan were official languages of the games, but due to the political sensitivity surrounding the use of Catalan, the nations entered in French alphabetical order. For unknown reasons, all three games taking place in Japan had the nations enter in English alphabetical order instead of Japanese characters. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, teams were ordered by the number of strokes in the Chinese translation of the team name.^[15] In the 2010 Winter Olympics, teams entered in English alphabetical order, although the languages of the Olympics are also the languages of the host country, Canada, because English is the more dominant of the two in Vancouver and in the host province of British Columbia. In the 1980 Summer Olympics and the 2014 Winter Olympics, the countries entered in the Cyrillic alphabetical order, which is the Russian language's official script.

Traditional events

Further information: List of people who have opened the Olympic Games

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Queen Elizabeth II officially opens the 2012 London Olympic Games

After all nations have entered, the President of the Organizing Committee makes a speech, followed by the IOC president. At the end of his speech, he introduces the representative or head of state of the host country who officially declares the opening of the Games. Despite the Games having been awarded to a particular city and not to the country in general, the Olympic Charter presently requires the opener to be the host country's head of state.^[16] However, there have been many cases where someone other than the host country's head of state opened the Games. The first example was at 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.^[17]
The Olympic Charter provides^[16] that the person designated to open the Games should do so by reciting whichever of the following lines is appropriate:

• If at the Games of the Olympiad (Summer Olympics): I declare open the Games of [name of the host city] celebrating the [ordinal number of the Olympiad] Olympiad of the modern era.
• If at the Winter Games: I declare open the [ordinal number] Olympic Winter Games of [name of the host city].

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 Berlin Summer Olympics, the openers have used the standard formula. Recent editions of the Winter Games have seen a trend of using the first version instead of the second, which happened in both the 2002 and 2010^[18] Winter Games. There have been four further exceptions to the rule: