Canada marches into unique opening ceremony at Milan Cortina Olympics

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. 

Livigno is staging snowboard and freestyle skiing events. Bormio, about a 90-kilometre drive away, is hosting men's alpine skiing, with the downhill first on the schedule Saturday, as well as ski mountaineering, which is making its Olympic debut. 

Cortina D'Ampezzo, which held the 1956 Games and had about two dozen Canadian athletes march, is roughly 400 kilometres from Milan in the heart of the Dolomite mountains. 

Spectators in the town, brimming with shops, cafés and high-end boutiques is home to curling, sliding sports and women's alpine skiing events gathered near the town square for an unusual ceremony. 

Competition started in northeastern Italy a couple of days ago, and the Olympic buzz has been building since. A few dozen members of the Canadian team participated in the ceremony on a chilly but comfortable evening. 

There was, however, no stadium setting in Cortina. Spectators instead lined the nearby streets and sidewalks or watched the unique proceedings from hotel or chalet balconies. 

Predazzo, the fourth location taking part in the Friday's ceremony, is about 300 kilometres away in the autonomous province of Trento.

 Italy also welcomed the world at the 1960 Olympics in Rome and again in 2006 in Turin.

Back in Milan, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, who was booed when shown on the big screen as the American delegation walked onto the stadium floor, was among the dignitaries in attendance inside a tight security perimeter. 

Sirens could be heard across Milan throughout the day and helicopters buzzed overhead in the hours leading up to the Games' official opening.

The nearly three-hour spectacle in Italy's second-largest city featured homages to the country's arts and culture, including three massive tubes of paint suspended high above the arena floor

There were also performances by American pop star Mariah Carey inside Milan's iconic 75,000-seat stadium that's home to soccer giants AC Milan and Inter Milan. The building, originally constructed in 1926, has also hosted World Cup games and Champions League finals.

Most countries were greeted warmly by the crowd — Ukraine and the Olympic hosts received the loudest ovations — but Israel received a mixed welcome that combined jeers and cheers.

The organizers of a Games set to be staged across 22,000 square kilometres of territory in order to use as much existing infrastructure as possible said in the official notes that Friday's showcase was "a return that unites memory and vision, reaffirming Italy's role as a crossroads of culture, innovation, and the ability to imagine new ways of creating an Olympic ceremony."

Two cauldrons inspired by the geometric studies of Leonardo da Vinci were lit simultaneously in a Games first — one in Milan at the Arco della Pace, some four kilometres from San Siro, and at Piazza Dibona in Cortina.

The ceremony's theme was "Harmony" at a time of increased tensions in a number of hot spots around the world. 

Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck