Olympics Special Section: Fantastic Flight of Fancy

At a remarkable ceremony without a distinct beginning or end, the grandest assembly of athletes in the history of the world settled last week into Seoul. The Olympic stadium, 100,000 full, really was just the centerpiece in a swirl of fantastic activity that started on the Han River with wind surfers and skiers and brought blossoms of colorful parachutists bursting from the sky.

While hundreds of small drums tapped footsteps and heartbeats, and the giant Dragon Drum (arriving by riverboat) beat cannon shots and thunderclaps, the children of South Korea danced a delightful welcome for nearly 10,000 sportsmen from 160 countries on parade. Someone thought of limiting the marchers in the interest of time, but the athletes screamed. "You're not in the Olympics if you don't march," said the U.S. hurdler Edwin Moses, who smiled sadly when the first impulse of the American team was to threaten a boycott of the opening scene. Boycott isn't usually an athlete's word. "I still miss 1980," Moses said. "Marching into Moscow would have been thrilling."

Vladimir Salnikov pines the same way for Los Angeles and 1984. "When it looked like only some of us could march here," the Soviet swimmer said, "I was just hoping to be one of them. Eight years ago we were alone. Four years ago we were apart. Just once I wanted to walk in together." Moses is still at the top of his game, but Salnikov's long day as the world's freestyle champion has passed. He can expect nothing more in Seoul than to see the last of his records fall in front of him. Yet he was desperate to be in the parade.

"I've talked to my players about it," said John Thompson, Georgetown's ordinarily unsentimental basketball coach. "But you can't describe the opening ceremony." Now the head U.S. coach, Thompson was an Olympic assistant in 1976. "I was tremendously surprised. I'd been through a world championship with the Boston Celtics, a few things like that. But I was never so overwhelmed. You walk out on that field -- look around at all the athletes -- and a side of you comes out that no one knows. It's just an amazing sense of pride."

A Kenyan runner, Paul Ereng, looked around at his own team. Several countrymen more celebrated than he had not made the squad. "That's the greatest thing about the Games," he said. "They aren't for the most experienced, and they aren't for the least. Neither are they for the best known or the worst. They're for the first one home."

It was a brilliant morning: the Netherlands had the foresight to pack orange parasols. Most of the athletes' costumes were as summery as the straw skimmers sported by the French, though the Australians must have been sweating under their dry-as-a-bone cattleman coats. A few lampshade headdresses competed with several styles of burnooses. But all the world's colors mixed together looked muted next to the wondrous columns of gold and the silky rainbow ranks of Koreans.