A history of Russia and coconut-powered underpants: Despite a refusenik Olympic ring, the Sochi opening ceremony was a fantastic spectacle... and fascinating TV





The opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics was a stunning, strange spectacle, an extraordinary piece of political propaganda, and fantastic, fascinating television.

The Russians have, we’re told, spent £30.7 billion on the games in Sochi and at times it looked as if £30 billion had gone on the epic, cosmic start, which had everything from a potted history of the Russian Revolution and Tolstoy’s War & Peace being told through the medium of dance by the Bolshoi Ballet to a commentary worthy of Alan Partridge.

'Thar she blows !' Clare Balding's fury at President Putin's anti-gay rights policy finally proves too much for her to contain any longer as the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics begin

Like spinning electric jellyfish, the ballerinas performing Swan Lake were mesmerising

Images were inspired by everything from the Teletubbies to Stravinsky, a crystal globe commemorating the achievements of Ivan The Terrible, to a marching, mincing army and electric skaters dreamed up by the Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk; it had it all.

Events like this are of course what the BBC excels at – and its coverage was brilliantly comprehensive to the point of being exhausting, even when it bordered on the bonkers.

War & Peace On Ice: no, not the latest Reality TV show featuring celebrities like Denise Welch - the Bolshoi Ballet

It began with Clare Balding, returning to the BBC from her new home at Channel 4 Racing, making a typically impassioned summary of the significance of the 16 days ahead – for us and for President Putin, as both a prestigious, contentious political symbol and as sporting entertainment.

Things quickly seemed to be going awry though when Clare explained some of the new disciplines awaiting us – like ‘slopestyle’ which, she said was ‘about creative expression and passionate performance and brings with it a whole new language of tricks, kickers and big air.’

Could air come in different sizes? It did in Putin's Russia, where everything was big - from the air to the not-very-cuddly mascots.



Even more improbably, she claimed that Great Britain had ‘genuine chances of multiple medals.’

As the start approached, the urgency in her galloping, gabbling address increased as if we were about to witness The Hunger Games.

Indeed, the circle of brightly coloured stadia resembled a cross between Disneyland and Rollerball with a lethal-looking ski jump, like something from Alton Towers, and what former Olympic skier Graham Bell called a ’bulletproof’ ski track.

The thought of trained marksmen, lead by President Putin no doubt, firing at the skiers as they swooshed down the slopes certainly sounded more exciting than Ski Sunday. Clare was very excited AND very worried.

‘But with the staging of a world event comes the world,’ she proclaimed, becoming more and more evangelical, as if the work she was doing there now meant that the resistance to Putin's Russia now consisted of Pussy Riot and her.

President Vladimir Putin was, she said, facing ‘uncomfortable questions’ about gay rights, animal welfare and corruption, although it was hard to imagine a mere question make the Hard Man/Action Man of World Politics 'uncomfortable.' ('This nail that I hammer into my chest - that is uncomfortable')



Putin was looking at ‘a clamour' said Clare, 'louder than they’ve ever heard here. For progress, for enlightenment, and for an understanding of equality.’

Vote Balding! Team Clare ! Yay.

She had tried her best but it was sadly not enough to quell the tide of twits trolling her on twitter in a torrent of dumb abuse for even being there, working, as if a boycott by Clare Balding would change anything. .



The British Are Coming ! Team GB were clearly taking no chances with the cold wearing heavily-padded coats, Russian hats, and Stella McCartney thermal long johns. Dressing like The Mounties basically

No-one could complain that the ceremony wasn't educational. Either that or the Russians just thought we Westerners were pig ignorant. It featured various sections acknowledging and illustrating the likes of Stravinsky, Tschaikovsky, Tolstoy and Russia's cultural achievements in science, music, dance and literature and not a single winner of Russia's Got Talent or Get Me Out Of Here, I'm A Celebrity-ski.

It worked too. Afterwards I got a degree in Art or several GSCEs on the Open University.



First up came the sort of dreamy, arty video familiar from the Eurovision Song Contest through the ages illustrating the 33 letters in Russia’s Cyrillic alphabet in a manner that was part Alice In Wonderland and part The Power Of Nightmares by Adam Curtis.

‘K’ for Kandinsky for example made perfect sense, as did the letter representing the likes of Dostoevsky, Tschaikovsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Diaghilev, and Nabakov.

Others were less predictable and, um, romantic, paying homage to the Sikorsky helicopter, something called ‘Hedgehog in The Fog’, and ‘the corn rowing machine' - helpful for anyone playing Trivial Pursuit.

It turns out that the Periodic Table was formulated by Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (who knew?!) and the name for the famous Russian hat those scary Russian general wore watching all those parades in the 1980s are called 'Ouchanka'.

The inclusion of ‘Parachute’ probably referred to the first person to jump with a parachute. This was Andrew Garnerin . You can win £10 in the pub by giving your mates five guess at the year (1797) - the crazy madman. I wouldn't jump with one now.



'Flash ! Ah-ah ! Saviour of the universe!' While some of the set pieces were sensational, others did resemble War of the Worlds or, on a more unsavoury note, the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber

‘T’ was for ‘Television’ but it was here that Hazel Irvine drew the line and stood up for her fellow countrymen by over-ruling this blatant piece of propaganda.

‘Boris Rosing was indeed one of the early pioneers of television,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘But it was a Scotsman, John Logie Baird, who first transmitted moving images.’

You tell ‘em Hazel!

The live presentation began badly, inevitably recalling the dreaded Cirque du Soleil or Christmas at Westfield Shopping Centre with lots of snow and whimsical fantasy.



'We're walking in the air-rrrrr.. Oh hang on.' Lubov might sound like a gay sex aid but actually means 'love' - which is ultimately the same thing

It focused on an 11 year old girl playing the character of 'Lubov' (which sounds like a gay sex aid banned in the motherland but actually means Love, which is ultimately the same thing). Her dreams were ‘going to take us on a journey across this vast land’, mostly by floating into the air on a giant kite.



‘Tonight Russia’s many diverse regions are flying to us,’ said Hazel, reading from the press release as symbols of its nine landscapes (including giant papier mache villages and a volcano) floated ingeniously and eerily across the middle of the arena suspended on a giant rail.

Hazel was armed with endless Russian facts with which to impress your friends.

Russia consisted of seven million square miles, covering one eighth of the world’s surface, with nine time zones and 185 ethnic groups.



’Keep your eyes on the big flakes!’ Hazel ordered as five huge snow flakes expanded, blossoming into the Olympic rings.

Well, four of them did. There was one refusenik snowflake, a ring that didn’t open, appropriately symbolising the fact that Russian had not quite embraced the Olympic spirit of tolerance.

You could picture the poor soul who was in charge of the snowflakes being hauled off to Siberia as President Putin made his entrance looking like Mr Burns from The Simpsons and, unusually for him, without his shirt off wrestling a polar bear to the ground before slitting its throat.



On the stadium floor, a giant Russian flag was formed, comprised of 240 illuminated figures in red, white and blue, glowing like the subjects of a Ready Brek advert directed by the Pet Shop Boys.

The arrival into the stadium of the 2,800 athletes is usually incredibly tedious but years of practice with parades of troops and tanks paid off meant the Russians fulfilled their promise of delivering them all in just 45 minutes.



They had also introduced an innovation to proceedings, Irvine said, namely projections on to the stadium floor of the outline of each nation – from space!

Was she making this stuff up?! Had someone been pulling her leg?

One refusenik snowflake would not become the fifth Olympic ring, which was only appropriate given the way Putin's government had not embraced the spirit of tolerance. Sadly you feared, Siberia beckoned for the poor soul responsible

Hazel was armed with a ton of research and she wasn’t going to waste it.

Norway was the most successful nation in winter Olympic history with 306 medals, a third of them gold. Boy...



As for Denmark on the other hand, ‘believe it or not, it has only one winter medal – a silver' !

Unsure how surprising this was I didn’t know whether to believe this or not but you can imagine Norway never lets them forget it.

Montengro, we learned, ‘literally means black mountain’, while ‘the yellow in the middle of Kyrgyzstan’s red flag represents the roof of a traditional yurt - in case you were wondering.'

Hazel, you read my mind.



She claimed the colours of the Estonian flag ‘are blue to symbolise the country’s blue skies, white for the snows of the long winter and the black is its dark past of suffering.’

Cheer up Estionia ! It might never happen !

Still, at least they had won the medal for Most Miserable Flag event.



With 88 countries to comment on, Hazel went into full Alan Partridge mode.

‘It’s never snowed in East Timor !’ she claimed, as its alpine skier appeared - the type of fact that no-could contest as no-one knew, or cared.



As muted as ever, the Americans invaded the arena with the largest team of the event, and of any Winter Olympics, wearing their traditional costume as the worst-dressed nation in the Games

‘Malta has its first ever female competitor. Born in France, she qualifies through her Maltese great granddad. She’ll compete on slopes 1500m high,' Hazel informed us, before adding her killer punchline:'Highest point on Malta? 253 metres.’

Back of the net !

Some of the individual stories were so far-fetched even Hazel couldn’t have made them up.

Alpine skier Antonio Jose Pardo Andretta had been diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of eight and given three months to live, but at 43, he was in the Winter Olympics representing Venezuela. In fact he was their whole team. Respect is due.



Looking like Nosferatu's mother, Princess Anne checks on the Bolshoi Ballet's interpretation by having a quick read through War & Peace

Irvine then introduced ‘the first ever winter Olympian from Paraguay’ with the tale ‘she was adopted by an American family aged six months when she left Paraguay and only returned there after a phone call to a gran who said ‘why don’t you try and ski for us?’, although somehow I imagine there was slightly more to it than that.



Mexican Prince Hubertus von Hohenlohe, 55, was going to compete in a spandex Mariachi themed racing suit, and Fuahea Semi from Tonga had ‘learned to luge’ and changed his name to ‘Bruno Banani’ as part of a marketing ploy for a German underwear company.

‘He will wear what they’re calling coconut-powered underpants!’ boomed Hazel, sounding suspiciously as if she knew what she was talking about.

There was a certain frisson as the American team of 230 (the largest ever) invaded the stadium – the first time it had attended a Russian event having always boycotted them in the past.

The Americans were the worst-dressed, as usual.

Other noteworthy costumes included Germany’s much-discussed rainbow-coloured outfit, which was either a political statement or a tribute to Timmy Mallet.

The Irish team had come expecting trouble, dressed in less friendly military camouflage. Lithuania were in bright green and yellow like elves playing for Norwich City, while Mongolia’s team of two had Italian-designed outfits made of Mongolian cashmere. Swish.

‘I should mention the music is actually being mixed ringside,’ said that well-known rave expert, Robin Cousins. ‘By DJ Rudenko.’

When one of the mascots turned out to be a giant bear on ice skates, you half expected President Putin to pull out his rifle and shoot it – from force of habit.

A film of ‘the story of Russia through the ages’ was like the outtakes from Game Of Thrones, as we watched strong/scary Russian men cheerfully destroying forests, being made to work the land, invading other countries and wearing wigs pretending to be English.

Spot the Teapot. This 'faiytale medieval city' was a cross between It's A Knockout and Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory

The centrepieces were a breathtaking mix of Russian beauty and might, particularly for the way they used the air across the centre of the stadium as their stage - a trick even the Chinese hadn't thought of in Beijing.

To the sound of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring, a 'troika' of three ice horses floated through the night pulling what was apparently burning orange sun but actually looked like a futuristic Krispy Kreme doughnut or something showing the perils of piles. 'A ring of fire' as Johnny Cash would say.



This was followed by a ‘fairytale medieval city’, a cosmic kaleidoscope like something from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory occupied by 'onion domes', acrobats, Cossack dancers and giant spinning skittles, flying pigs, teapots and vases. Covent Garden on a Sunday afternoon will never seem to thrilling again.



'Does my bum look big in this ?' Even though she is not in the pantheon of great Russian Olympiads, gymnast Alina Kabaeva, carried the torch. This clearly had nothing to do with the fact that she is reputed to be Putin's lover

Lubov looked at a crystal globe containing the creation of St.Basil’s cathedral commissioned by Ivan the Terrible.

‘Legend has it that he blinded its architects so that nothing would ever be so beautiful!’ enthused Hazel. ‘He was a charmer alright. But he turned Russia from a small medieval state to a massive empire.’

So that's alright then.



The Bolshoi Ballet’s portrayal of the 565,000 words in War & Peace certainly saved anyone who hadn’t read it a lot of trouble.

Then the Revolution of 1917 arrived in the form of a giant red steam train, as if designed by Malevich, floating across the stadium to symbolise ‘Bolshevism, Lenin, Trotsky, civil war, a bloody end to the era of the Czars, the Soviet Union and Communism.’

Phew.

Eventually it ended with Lubov walking in the air like The Snowman, floating above a huge blue balloon. When she released her red balloon, presumably Communism was at an end.

A final section of jellyfish ballerinas dancing to Swan Lake and electric ice-skaters representing some of the events ahead was stunning and suitably futuristic.

The arrival of the Olympic torch was announced by the outline of an ice hockey player launching an electric puck.

Daniel Sandford, the BBC's Moscow correspondent, said that the big talking point of the night would be that one of the six torch bearers carrying the Olympic flame was Alina Kabaeva, who is widely rumoured to be Putin’s girlfriend and even his fiancée.

‘A very, very talented rhythmic gymnast.’

Considering the incredible nature of the spectacle that had gone beforehand, it was disappointing, not to say disturbing, that this was the image we were left with as the ceremony came to a close.