Quotes of the Day

A 2,500-year-old Greek poem extols the power of music to enfold and enlarge Olympic glory. And so in the Italian host city of Torino, the athletes of the world marched into a stadium originally erected by former Fascist leader Benito Mussolini to several ancient tunes, such as Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, KC & the Sunshine Band's I'm Your Boogie Man and the Village People's Y.M.C.A. Are these the Winter Olympic Games or a disco inferno?

It does make some sense. For this is a country particularly proud of Infernos. Indeed, after the thump-thump-thumping came a reading from the poet-prophet Dante, with the Italian actor Giorgio Albertazzi reciting an inspiring passage from The Divine Comedy. In it, Ulysses urges his aging and tired band of sailors to go on with him to search for new worlds. In a fiery scene, scores of legs kicked in the air evoked the sinners' feet in the Inferno's Canto XX. How unholy is the thrill when you sense that the circles of hell have, in the end, been transformed into the Olympic rings?

For all the evocations of international camaraderie, the Olympics are a lot about national pride. And so, beyond Dante, Italy trotted out its stars to tout its culture: Giorgio Armani designing costumes; Sophia Loren carrying the Olympic flag; Eva Herzigova, a Czech-born resident of Torino, starring as Botticelli's Venus on a half-shell and Luciano Pavarotti singing Puccini's Nessun Dorma. A Ferrari roared on stage; speakers blared the theme from Rocky (Stallone! The Italian Stallion!); and suddenly, after a magnificent dove formation by acrobats on gossamer thread, there was a poetry-spouting Yoko Ono (who knew she was Italian?). The only thing missing was Torino's famous shroud, said to have covered Jesus.

The Olympics are about the pride of the host country, but the Games also bring in worldly anxieties. Danish athletes reportedly received special protection because of the global swirl of threats surrounding the publication of cartoons Muslims consider insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. Some 400 antiglobalization protesters burned U.S. and Olympic flags in downtown Torino just a few hours before the opening ceremonies, as Italian security officials voiced concern about more violent disruptions of the Games. Everywhere in the city and around the stadium, soldiers and police were visible and, until the disco music drowned them out, watchdog helicopters whirred overhead.

As for the internal controversies of the Olympics, they were on parade even before the opening ceremony. Propecia sounds like an Olympian god and so it had its sacrificial victim. At 26, U.S. skeleton driver Zach Lund uses the drug to reduce his hair loss, but it's banned because it can mask the use of steroids. As a result, he has been banished from the games. Wayne Gretzky, head of Canada's hockey team, is being stalked by a scandal linking his wife Janet Jones and close associates to gambling. Says an indignant Christine Keshen, a member of Canada's women's curling team: "If people can't lay off of him for what's going on back home, they need to realize this is the Olympics."

And that is the point, after all. In spite of patriotic excess, overpowering wedding banquet music and all sorts of anxiety, it is the refuge of sport that keeps athletes and fans coming back for the Olympics, summer or winter. No matter what is said in Dante and his Inferno. For the words to remember are exactly the opposite of some of his most famous: "Hold on to hope all you who enter here." Let the games begin.

• HOWARD CHUA-EOAN
• Incandescent ceremony; internal controversy. The Winter Games get under way