Beijing opens Games with best show on earth

a moving spectacle

Video Links for Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony

the countdown

the footprint

magically floating Olympic rings

lighting of the cauldron of Beijing Olympic

Olympic opening ceremonies the best ever

BEIJING – If any future Olympic Games is ever credited with a more awesome, brilliant, inspired, powerful or original opening ceremonies it might have to be because everybody on the planet developed amnesia.

The spectacular show which China produced to welcome the world to the XXIX Olympic Games and welcome themselves to the world was almost certainly the greatest show in the history of the greatest show in sport. Read more

Beijing Olympics: How the opening ceremony unfolded

In a riot of colour, pageantry and invention, Beijing fired the starting gun for the 2008 Olympic Games with the most breathtaking opening ceremony ever seen.

It was an emphatic display of China’s long traditions of showmanship, and a worldwide audience of up to four billion surely looked on in awed admiration. Read more