2004 Summer Olympics opening ceremony

The opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games was held on August 13, 2004 at the Olympic Stadium in Maroussi, Greece, a suburb of Athens. 72,000 spectators attended the event, with approximately 15,000 athletes from 202 countries participating in the ceremony as well. It marked the first-ever international broadcast of high definition television, undertaken by the U.S. broadcaster NBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK.

The opening ceremony began with a twenty-eight second countdown—one second per Olympics held since Athens last hosted the first modern games—paced by the sounds of an amplified heartbeat played by two drummers, one inside the stadium, and one projected on the stadium screen from the ancient stadium of Olympia, the locale of the Olympic games of antiquity. A blazing projectile, seemingly coming from the ancient stadium of Olympia on the screen, lands on the flooded stadium. According to Dimitris Papaioannou, the event "was a pageant of traditional Greek culture and history harkening back to its mythological beginnings, and viewed through the progression of Greek art." The dramatic music that accompanied the performances often combined drumming with the traditionally Greek sound of bouzouki.

The programme began with a drummer ensemble marching in the Athens Olympic Stadium playing their Typical Greek drummers : one of them in the Ancient Olympia Stadium playing his drum was shown in the screen of the stadium and one in the Athens Olympic Stadium to show a connection between the ancient past and the present. From the screen where from the images of the Olympia drummer are being shown, a lighter rocket simulating a comet crashes into the giant pool of the stadium drawing with its fire the Olympic Rings. This first act of the Opening Ceremony was called "Calling to the Ancient Olympic Spirits" by the organizers: the comet symbolizes the fire of the ancients giving life to the modern Olympic movement, thus bridging the past and the present together. Next, a young Greek boy sailed into the stadium on a giant paper boat waving the host nation's flag, symbolizing Greece's maritime tradition and its close connection to the sea.

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