In opening ceremonies where you really did need a program to tell the players, the Games of the 16th Winter Olympiad got under way here Saturday afternoon in a makeshift arena built on the outskirts of the French Alps.
With a capacity crowd of 30,000 looking on and the white-capped Beaufortain range of mountains serving as a backdrop, the traditional parade of nations took on more intrigue than usual. The lineup was decidedly different from the one that paraded around Calgary's Olympic Stadium just four years ago.There were no teams entered from either East Germany or the Soviet Union, the nations that won more medals than any others in Calgary. Instead, there were four separate teams comprising athletes heretofore aligned with the Soviet Union; and for the first time since World War II, Germany entered just one Olympic team, with no distinction as to East and West.
Also, instead of one team from Yugoslavia there were three - a four-member team from Croatia, a 28-member team from Slovenia and a 25-member team from Yugoslavia.
Add and subtract the changes, and it brings to 65 the number of nations officially entered in these Winter Olympic Games, a full 10 more than were entered at Calgary.
Most strikingly different from past Olympiads was the entrance into the stadium of the cooperative team from the now-dispersed Soviet Union. Athletes from the five republics of Russia, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Uzbekistan walked somberly behind an Olympic flag that was adorned, it seemed appropriately, with five rings.
Each of the athletes waved a small flag representing the respective republics. The contingent looked to be no more than 60 members strong, much less than the 140 Unified Team athletes officially entered in the Olympics. Apparently, enthusiasm for marching in the opening ceremonies wasn't keen on the Unified Team and many of the athletes elected to stay in their rooms and watch on television.
In sharp contrast, just three nations behind the Unified Team came the team from Estonia. Ever since the Soviet invasion of Estonia in World War II, Estonian athletes had marched with the USSR. Now, for the first Olympiad since 1936, they marched alone again.
Of the 20 Estonian athletes entered in these Games, 20 marched into the stadium.
It was the same for Latvia and its 23 athletes - a number similar to the 26-member Latvian team that last marched independently in the Winter Games in 1936. And it was the same for the six members of the Lithuanian team.
In all, the old Soviet Union will field 189 athletes spread over four teams in these Games. In 1988, the USSR sent 114 athletes to Calgary.
By dividing into its old boundaries, Yugoslavia, too, sent more athletes than before - the total of 57 from Croatia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia exceeding the 23 that were sent to Calgary.
Germany, on the other hand, saw its overall numbers slip. In 1988, the now defunct East Germans fielded a 56-member team and the West Germans a squad of 101. This time, 127 German athletes marched together, stride for stride.
How all of this will affect the competition of the Albertville Winter Games during their 17-day run remains to be seen. Certainly there will be subplots of former teammates now competing on opposite sides, and vice versa, and certainly the Soviet Union and East Germany will no longer rule the medal count.
But there's no question that Eastern Europe's new order affected, in a subtle yet unmistakable way, the opening ceremonies of the Albertville Winter Games.
Far less affecting was the pre-parade consternation of Bill Koch, the U.S. cross-country skier who was elected by his Olympic teammates to carry the United States flag in the opening ceremonies. Koch was concerned that the U.S. had an Olympic tradition of not dipping the flag as it passed in front of the officials representing the host nation.
"What do you guys think?" Koch asked American reporters at a press conference earlier in the day. "Do I dip the flag or do I not dip the flag?"
Later, however, officials of the United States Olympic Committee made Koch aware of a federal statute (No. 829 to be exact), that states, "The U.S. flag shall not be dipped to any person or any thing."
So Koch looked dutifully straight ahead and kept the flag erect as he and the 182-member contingent from the Etats-Unis d'America approached the official box containing French President Francois Mitterrand.
Meanwhile, in the contingent just ahead, the Estonian flag-bearer dipped his flag and kept it there. He was just happy to have one to dip.