A Real Team Effort

SALT LAKE CITY —  Smart enough to skate around scandal, tough enough to stare down terrorism, the 2002 Winter Olympics opened Friday with enough magic to re-create a miracle.

Remembering America’s worst nightmare, the opening ceremony began with the somber tatters of a World Trade Center flag.

Realizing America’s brightest hopes, it ended with the wondrous triumph of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” hockey team.

It was biting in its chill.

It was embracing in its warmth.

It was precisely the roaring spectacle required by an uncertain country venturing to play host to the world’s biggest sporting event while waging a war.

While snipers stood watch, human icicles skated.

While helicopters buzzed overhead, 52,000 spectators dressed in paper ponchos that turned them into human snowflakes. Beneath the shadows of the rolling, snow-covered Wasatch Mountains, the sky danced with occasional flurries and relentless optimism.

The theme of these Games, as printed directly on the Olympic torch, is “Light the Fire Within.”

And so the opening ceremony did, sometimes loudly, other times somberly, but always appropriately for a nation that now, more than ever, needs to think big.

How perfect that the final flame was lighted by the craziest dreamers of all.

After two hours of ceremony involving everyone from settlers to Native Americans to skating coyotes, current Olympic stars Picabo Street and Cammi Granato carried the torch up the steps toward the caldron atop Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium.

Once there, they were met by Mike Eruzione, the star of the most famous underdog champions in U.S. sports history.

Wearing his hockey sweater, he stood alone with the flame for several seconds before turning to the caldron with a devilish grin and summoning, from the darkened wings, his teammates from that 1980 U.S. gold-medal winning hockey team.

Together, all in uniform, all huddled and touching the torch, they leaned over and lighted the 117-foot caldron and millions of imaginations.

Twenty-two years ago, their shocking semifinal victory over the Soviet Union in Lake Placid, N.Y., caused Americans everywhere to steer their cars to the side of the road and honk their horns.

On Friday, it caused them to gasp.

Then, as now, a miracle on ice.

“The final journey,” Eruzione said.

It is now the obligation of the Games to live up to the standard set by his team that, as a bunch of college kids in 1980, began the Olympics with seemingly no chance of a medal.

The favorites were the professional Soviets. They had earlier defeated the NHL All-Stars and then, in a pre-Olympic exhibition, dominated the American kids in a 10-3 victory.

Yet, led by the emotional Eruzione and goalie Jim Craig, the Americans scored two third-period goals for a 4-3 victory over the Soviets in the semifinals, then defeated Finland with another third-period comeback in the championship game.

“It was much more than a hockey game,” Craig said. “It was all that Americans believe in.”

The torch earlier had entered the stadium in the hands of other tiny, simpler miracles.

Just down the road, it had been carried by Andrea Mead Lawrence, 69, a Mammoth Lakes resident and former slalom gold-medal winner who last carried the torch in Squaw Valley in 1960.

Back then, she skied the torch into the stadium while pregnant with daughter Quentin.

On Friday, she handed the torch to Quentin, 42.

“This is about the spark that keeps the human spirit alive,” she said tearfully.

Such was the story that Friday splendidly conveyed, from the opening entrance of the tattered World Trade Center flag to the closing fire on ice.

There was only thing hotter than watching five flaming Olympic rings on a skating rink.

It was witnessing our wartime president marching unescorted into a spotlight, then climbing into the stands to hang with the athletes.

We may never remember the exact words of any of President Bush’s speeches, but who will forget how he casually took a cell phone offered from skater Sasha Cohen and spoke to the person on the other end.

Yeah. President Bush. Right. Gimme back to Sasha, will ya? You’re wasting minutes.

The President arrived at the start of the ceremony, just before the controversial carrying of the tattered flag into the stadium by New York City police and firefighters and several athletes.

Olympic officials initially balked at the idea, emphasizing that they operate a world event with no national bias, noting they have never before agreed to honor the tragedies of a single nation.

Yet after some negotiation, they agreed that the Sept. 11 tragedy was not about a single nation, but the world.

So the part of the world that gathered here Friday fell silent as the tattered flag billowed in the hands of the rescue workers.

The silence then became reverence at the singing of the national anthem by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a rendition so rousing they repeated the refrain twice.

The reverence then became wild cheering as a bright new American flag was raised and spotlighted at the same time that darkness covered the tattered version.

That cheering reached its peak toward the end of the evening when International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, as part of his welcoming address, said, “We stand united with you ... “

The rest of that sentence was lost in the roar.

It was enough to make a young boy holding a lantern giggle.

Symbolic of the Games’ theme--light the fire within--the red-clad child had earlier led the parade of 77 nations and 2,531 athletes into a stadium where, not surprisingly, none were ridiculed and all were welcomed.

Nobody booed skier Bagher Kalhor, the flag-bearer from Iran, one of the countries cited in President Bush’s “axis of evil.”

Nobody jeered Patrick Singleton, the luge slider and flag-bearer for Bermuda braving 10-degree temperatures in red Bermuda shorts.

When the Americans entered last, the cheers were loud enough to drown out weeks of criticism for what is expected to be our overbearing patriotism.

While we cheered, the athletes cheered and waved back under their blue berets, even the stoic Michelle Kwan, openly delighted to participate in this parade after skipping the ceremonies in 1998 at Nagano, Japan.

And while the athletes cheered, a television camera showed troops in Afghanistan pointing to the flags on their uniforms and chanting, “USA, USA.”

If they can do it, so can we.

If a bunch of college kids can skate through the thickest of flames to carry one, so can we.

Such was the message on a night when America walked bravely into 17 days of what it is convinced-- what it must be convinced--will be a winter wonderland.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com