Winter Games Are Officially Open !

It looked like the Winter Olympics would get off to a bad start with the tragic death of a Georgian athlete who died in a tragic accident during a practice run on the luge course. But the incident was handled well. Olympic president Rogge spoke of the death and both the Canadian and Olympic flags were lowered to half-mast. The Georgian team marched into the stadium with the other athletes and the crowd gave them a standing ovation.

Then Canada put on its show for the world. First the Canadian Mounted Police entered with the Canadian flag and then they let representatives from the First Nations people welcome everyone to Canada. It was colorful, entertaining and heartwarming.

Then the Canadians changed up the order of things. Before they put on the rest of their show, they had the parade of the athletes. That was smart, because it let the athletes see the bulk of the show instead of waiting in some parking lot to enter while everyone else got entertained.

I must admit that I love the parade of the athletes. My daughter and I have our own tradition where we judge the uniforms of the different countries. Some countries really style their athletes out, while other countries seem to punish their athletes by making them wear the ugliest uniforms imaginable.

This year, the United States, France and Russia, teams that usually have great uniforms, were only so-so. All three were OK, but I've seen them do better many times. Frankly, their uniforms looked liked ordinary stuff you'd find in any shop carrying winter gear.

The best dressed athletes came from Italy, Chile, Slovenia, Netherlands and Canada. Italy was perhaps the most stylish, wearing long grey designer coats over white slacks. But the other four looked very good also -- Chile wearing long red coats over tan slacks, Slovenia had their men all in black while the women wore very nice green coats over black pants, the Netherlands wore a muted shade of orange over black pants and the Canadians were decked out in long red coats with red and black scarves and black pants.

Meanwhile, the worst dressed teams were easy to pick -- Azerbijan, the Czech Republic and Ireland. Azerbijan (see picture) and the Czech Republic made the same mistake by supplying their athletes with pants that had little designs all over them. A person could go cross-eyed trying to look at those pants. And the Irish put black jackets over the brightest and ugliest yellow-green pants (which one almost needed sunglasses to look at).

After the parade of athletes, Canada put on the rest of their show. They had only 1/10th the budget the Chinese spent at the last summer games, but they did a great job with what they had. The show had some awesome music and was visually stunning. I thought they did a great job. The only misstep was during the lighting of the torch when they had some mechanical problems. But they got it done and Wayne Gretsky turned out to be the final torch bearer (no big surprise there).

The Olympics are officially open. Now we can look forward to some great competition for the next 16 days.