The opening ceremony of the World Athletics Championships in Beijing was a spectacular event in every technical detail, with the Chinese offering glimpses of striking creativity and painting varied scenes across the stadium floor reflecting the great development their thinking has reached in creativity and sports production. The opening ceremony lasted an hour and a half, beginning with a parade in which the Chinese carried the flags of 2014 countries taking part in the major event, the largest participation in the sport’s history. The Chinese insisted the show remain purely Chinese in character, carrying words of welcome, and featured a song titled “Welcome to Beijing,” in the presence of the Chinese president, IOC president Thomas Bach and members of his executive board, and the international athletics family represented by president Lamine Diack, whose term had only a few days left before Britain’s Lord Sebastian Coe took over the presidency, having been elected three days earlier along with a new council for the sport.
Senegal’s Lamine Diack delivered a speech at the opening ceremony in which he praised China’s efforts, leadership and people, for their great and growing interest in sport, and also commended the Chinese government’s strong commitment to making the event outstanding in every detail. The Chinese president then took to the stage to officially declare the championships open, in a scene that saw at least 70,000 spectators inside the stadium applaud, having come to follow the championships and enjoy athletics and its global stars.
What amazed those present in the stadium was that the opening celebration took place before the sun had even set, and yet the Chinese still excelled in distributing lighting effects across the stadium, leaving the crowd dazzled by Chinese aesthetics and limitless creativity
