The Opening Ceremony

Simone, Justin, Me, Carl and Stu at the Opening Ceremony

Last night I was lucky enough to be able to cover the opening ceremony for the Asian Games and had a fantantic seat in the press tribune about 15 rows back from the stage. Guangzhou built a brand new structure just for the Opening and Closing ceremony. They wanted to try something different and rather than have it in a stadium it sort of resembled an outdoor concert hall. This wasn't just eight big screens like you can see from the pictures, the entire stage transformed from a platform to water in nearly seconds and lights and wire gave the performers the ability to fly all over. My two favrorite moments were the large ship that came from the river into the stadium. Pirate looking guys, flew all over the sails as the boat sprayed water. The other moment that was unreal were the acrobats creating shapes on the giant boards. I sat next to Stu Hannagan, our VP in Australasia and he has been to dozens of Openings. He said this one was the best, even beating out Beijing. It was quite a show Guangzhou put on and it was an experience I never will forget.

Here are a screen grab of some of the pictures we sent from the Opening Ceremony to gettyimages.com

Check out all the pictures here at: http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?EventId=105770946&EditorialProduct=Sport