Day 1: Friday, February 8
Nonsports highlights
Opening ceremonies reveal the answer to the long-kept secret of who would light the towering caldron at Rice-Eccles Stadium. To the roar of 55,000 spectators, members of the "Miracle on Ice" U.S. men's hockey team lift the last torch and light the caldron. Team members won a gold medal against improbable odds at the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. . . . President Bush spends several hours in Utah where he formally opens the 2002 Winter Games at opening ceremonies. During his visit to Utah, the president also met with the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, attended a private reception in the Capitol rotunda with local dignitaries, met with U.S. Olympians and in a speech declared Salt Lake City the perfect place to hold the Winter Games. . . . Eight people carry the Olympic flag into opening ceremonies — former astronaut and U.S. senator John Glenn, former Polish Solidarity leader and politician Lech Walesa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1998 Japanese gold-medalist ski jumper Kazuyoshi Funaki, 2000 Australian gold-medalist runner and Sydney caldron-lighter Cathy Freeman, IOC member and three-gold-medal alpine skier Jean-Claude Killy, renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. . . . Entertainers who participated in opening ceremonies, which had a volunteer cast of 4,000, included Sting, Yo Yo Ma, the Dixie Chicks and LeAnn Rimes. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Utah Symphony and Cathedral of the Madeleine Choir also participated. . . . NBC's overnight ratings indicate the opening ceremonies were the highest-rated in Olympic history — for Winter or Summer Games — drawing a 25.5 rating and 72 million viewers. That breaks a 42-year-old record of 24.2 set in 1960 for Squaw Valley's Games. Salt Lake City leads the nation in watching the opening ceremonies.