Canada marches into unique Olympic opening
Global News
Canada marched into the Milan Cortina Winter Games — at four different locations — on a colourful and unique Friday night.
MILAN – Canada marched into the Milan Cortina Winter Games — at four different locations — on a colourful and unique Friday night.
The country’s delegation took part in a never-before-seen Parade of Athletes that stretched across northern Italy in the first Olympic curtain-raiser held at multiple venues for what is the most widespread event of its kind in history.
Moguls skier Mikaël Kingsbury and ski cross racer Marielle Thompson, both Olympic gold-medallists, carried the Maple Leaf in Livigno, more than 200 kilometres from Milan in the Italian Alps.
Roughly 50 members of the Canadian delegation in Milan marched into the famed San Siro, renamed Milano San Siro Olympic Stadium for the event that runs through Feb. 22, to raucous applause.
Meanwhile, in Livigno, fans stood in -3 C temperatures to watch the ceremony on two big screens with the halfpipe and big air runs gleaming white under the floodlights as a backdrop.
Kingsbury and Thompson — both four-time Olympians — have five medals between them.
“It’s quite a responsibility,” Thompson said of carrying her nation’s colours before leading the pack with Kingsbury. “To share it with Mikael is huge. He is such an icon in Canada and in our sport.”
Other than the walkout of athletes competing locally, the festivities at Livigno Snow Park were largely an exercise in watching big screens. The crowd cheered loudly when the town was announced as one of the host venues, but it was business as usual elsewhere as the occasional snowplow worked the slopes above the crowd.
