The opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games had its highlights and lowlights. One of the highlights was Queen Elizabeth and Daniel Craig's (aka James Bond) Olympic entrance.
Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) had me laughing uncontrollably with his "Chariots of Fire" skit, and I also enjoyed the show about Great Britain through the ages.
The lowlights have to include the two long sketches about British health care (nothing wrong with health care, but the skits ran on forever), and the bit about music through the decades (again, long to me, and how did it not include Elton John?).
The biggest London-controlled lowlight was the lighting of the Olympic torch. If you missed it, seven young athletes who represented the future of the games lit the torch. Personally, I can't believe the British didn't give that honor to Sir Roger Bannister.
Bannister is best known for breaking the four-minute mile May 6, 1954. The popular belief of the time was that such a feat was humanly impossible. The current record holder of the fastest mile is Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco with a time of 3:43.13 set July 7, 1999.
The International Olympic Committee provided the other lowlight of the opening ceremonies. These games mark the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre, when terrorists took the lives of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.
No single event hangs over the Olympic Games the way Munich does. Not even the Atlanta bombing has the same weight as the events in Munich in 1972.
During the opening ceremonies this year, the IOC would not allow a tribute to the athletes taken hostage and killed by the Palestinian group Black September. The Athlete Village held a moment of silence, but a tribute while the world watched the opening ceremonies would have been fitting.
I have always seen the Olympics as the world gathering in peace through sports. At times, the Olympics show the best that humanity can be with sports as a backdrop. That ideal was shattered by the events in Munich. Honoring the victims of that dark day would show that the peace and harmony of the Olympic spirit couldn't be destroyed by savage acts of violence. The games will go on.
The IOC should have honored the athletes who died in Munich during the opening ceremony. After 40 years, a new generation could learn something: The world hasn't changed that much, but the ideals on which the Olympics are based—excellence, respect and friendship—live on.
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