Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky runs with the Olympic torch to light the Vancouver 2010 Olympic cauldron at the conclusion of the Olympic opening ceremony.
It was a very wet night in a pouring rain as “The Great One” entered the plaza to bring the Olympic flame from the BC Place and the Olympic opening ceremonies to Coal Harbour after getting a ride on a flatbed truck.
The funny thing was that Olympic officials allowed only a very small number of people to witness the lighting. I am sure it looked much more crowded on television but in reality, there were not more than 150 people in the plaza.
At one point, people on the outside of the security fences began to rip the fabric on the fences which was blocking the view from the general public. Police initially tried to stop people but finally figured out how futile it was to keep people from attempting to witness history.
Overall, we did pretty well. My colleague Robert Deutsch had a really unique shooting angle from directly in front of the cauldron and made some remarkable pictures.
My take from the evening was pretty boring stuff. Shooting through a ton of rain with long glass is not always pretty but at least I got to see Gretzky make history one more time.
