Not Everyone Loves Ceremony

While Americans gave the Winter Olympic opening ceremony Friday red, white and blue raves, some members of the foreign press were critical of the festivities’ patriotic overtones.

Most of their criticism was about the tie-ins to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, especially the procession of the flag recovered from the rubble of the World Trade Center.

“This is wrong,” Hafez Dahi, sportswriter for Kuwait’s Al-Siyassah daily newspaper, said as he watched part of the ceremony with friends at home. “This is supposed to be just sports.”

U.S. athletes and police officers carried the flag into the stadium and the Mormon Tabernacle choir sang the national anthem at the beginning of the ceremony, which also featured a New York City police officer singing “God Bless America” and the gold medal-winning 1980 U.S. hockey team lighting the Olympic caldron.

In an article written before the ceremony, the Russian newspaper Kommersant said: “It is annoying that they are bringing the Ground Zero flag.... It doesn’t have anything to do with the Olympics.”

The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet ran a half-page picture of spectators holding American flags, then criticized such a patriotic display in the accompanying article.

Paris’ Le Monde praised organizers for providing “a quite sober and well-done spectacle, alternating lightness and gravity, never grandiloquent or vulgar.”

Japanese newspapers were full of kudos. Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest national paper, wrote that the “first major global event since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States ... also became the center stage for America’s declaration against terrorism.”

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Emotional Gamut

U.S. women’s downhill skier Picabo Street was crushed and cried openly after not being picked by her peers to carry the American flag in Friday’s opening ceremony, her father, Ron, said.

“She set herself up and took a fall,” he said. “She went through so much change. Yeah, she wanted to carry the flag.”

Picabo’s disappointment turned to joy when she learned Friday that she was going to have a major role in the torch-carrying ceremony that climaxed the event.

“Last night was really amazing,” she said Saturday. “You know, I really wanted to carry the flag, for my team, but last night was more. Last night was the entire Olympics, the whole world watching, and I was a part of it.

“To be honest, I really had a hard time bringing my feet back to the ground today in order to concentrate on what I’m doing.”

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I’m All Shook Up

U.S. women’s hockey team captain Cammi Granato, who ran the final leg of the Olympic torch relay Friday night with Street before passing the flame to Mike Eruzione for the caldron lighting, said she was stunned to be chosen for such a prominent role.

“I found out the night before,” she said. “I had known I was going to run the torch but I didn’t know I’d be with Picabo Street. I was trying to get out of the building pretty fast before they changed their mind.

“The opening ceremony always has that magical feel. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

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Another Memory

Mark Grimmette was part of U.S. Olympic history in Nagano, when he teamed with Brian Martin to win a bronze medal in luge doubles, marking the first time in 34 years that Americans had stood on a luge medal stand.

The irony was that, on the rung above him and Martin were Gordy Sheer and Chris Thorpe, also American. When it rains, it pours, in U.S. luge.

Grimmette had been fourth in Lillehammer four years earlier, and had been part of the U.S. luge program for 12 years. Now, not only has that hard work paid off in an Olympic medal, but also in a lifetime memory at Friday night’s opening ceremony.

Grimmette was selected as one of eight to carry in the tattered flag from the World Trade Center.

“I was amazed when I walked in,” said Grimmette, a Muskegon, Mich., native who now lives in Lake Placid, N.Y. “I expected lots of noise, but it was so quiet we could hear the sounds of our own footsteps. It was a powerful moment, one that I’ll never forget.”

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Something New

Thorpe will run with Clay Ives this time and then retire. He is recently married and expecting a child, so he called the Salt Lake Games his “last vacation” for a while.

Asked if he will encourage his child to become an athlete, he said he would, indeed. Because his wife is Kriste Porter, nine-time U.S. national champion freestyle skier, he was asked if he will push for skiing or sliding.

“Golf or tennis,” he said.

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Give Me a Break

A Russian cross-country skier blasted the tight security and searches for every entrant to Olympic venues Saturday morning.

“This is my fourth Olympic Games and no one has ever thrashed my personal belongings they way they’ve done it this time,” Larissa Lazutina, the silver medal winner in the women’s 15-kilometer freestyle race, said through an interpreter.

Waiting in line as inspectors collect loose pocket items, examine bags and check electronic equipment has become a daily part of life at the Salt Lake City Games. Lazutina finds it insulting and resents the insinuation that the competitors could be part of an attack plot.

“We came here to compete,” she said. “We have nothing else in our minds but competing.

“It’s not just this morning. Every day. They screen us and they take our belongings.”

She said that others would agree with her. However, the bronze and gold medal winners in her event did not take her side.

“It’s not very pleasant for everybody, but the safety is important,” said Katerina Neumannova of the Czech Republic, who finished third. “For me, it’s not a problem.”

“I do understand what the point of the security is,” gold-medal winner Stefania Belmondo of Italy said through an interpreter.

“They do their job. It is for our own security, our own safety. I don’t resent what they do to us. I understand. Good job, guys!”

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Times staff writers Bill Dwyre, Chris Dufresne, Helene Elliott and J.A. Adande and the Associated Press contributed to this report.