2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony - Opening Sequence

Opening Sequence

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 two drummers, one inside the stadium, and one projected on the stadium screen from the ancient stadium of Olympia, the locale of the Olympic games of antiquity. A blazing projectile, seemingly coming from the ancient stadium of Olympia on the screen, lands on the flooded stadium. According to Dimitris Papaioannou, the event "was a pageant of traditional Greek culture and history harkening back to its mythological beginnings, and viewed through the progression of Greek art." The dramatic music that accompanied the performances often combined drumming with the traditionally Greek sound of bouzouki.