Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Olympic Cauldron Lighting

Salt Lake City just celebrated their 10 year anniversary of hosting the Winter Olympic games in 2002.  I was still a senior in high school (in VA) at the time, and Dan was on his mission in Canada, so we wanted to experience a little bit of that olympic spirit while the anniversary celebrations were going on.  

The only event we got to attend was the relighting of the Olympic Cauldron at Rice Eccels Stadium at the U of U.  Thankfully, it wasn't too cold or too crowded.  



We ran into some ward friends there whose little girl got to touch one of the torches. 
They has a little program/ceremony before the lighting.  Speakers consisted of the 2002 SLC Mayor (Rocky Anderson), the 2002 Governor of Utah (Gov. Leavitt), as well as the current governor (Gary Herbert).    


News camera crews
My friends Bruce and Nadine from KSL. :)
Two Olympians who also came to pump up the crowd.
The fireworks right before the cauldron was supposed to light.  
I say "supposed" to because it didn't work... :(  They did a practice run earlier in the day and it had worked then, but didn't perform too well when the actual time came.  "Oh well," we thought.   
Then a minute or two later when everyone was slowly leaving, IT LIT!!  
It was fun to be there and get a small taste of the olympic spirit that was so strong here ten years ago.  

2 comments:

Mr and Mrs Smith and Co said...

Wow! You guys are all bundled up like it is cold there or something ;) Very cool, lit cauldren!

Kirsten said...

so jealous you guys were able to attend the 10 year anniversary event. Looks like a fun night.

Also, I love the pictures of Ben demolishing his cake. He really went to town! :)