Four years ago at the handover in Vancouver, Sochi's ballet dancers gave a tantalising glimpse of  what to expect at the Opening Ceremony this week. They danced to the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony Pathetique. This same music had been used at the very start of the 1980 Olympic Opening in Moscow, the most spectacular Ceremony seen up to that time.

The 2014 Ceremony, to be held indoors in the Fisht Stadium, will certainly be as spectacular as many in recent history.The winter openings were not always so elaborate.

In the Lake Placid Games of 1932 it lasted less than half-an-hour. The Games were opened by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not yet President but Governor of New York. The festivities began at 10 o'clock in the morning. The Great Britain team was comprised of four female skaters, from whom Mollie Phillips became the first woman from any nation to carry her country's flag.

At Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936, Nazi flags lined the roadside and until International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Henry Baillet Latour intervened, so did anti-Jewish slogans. A flame burned from a tower on the mountains as Adolf Hitler became the last head of state to open a Winter and Summer Olympics in the same year.

Molly Philips carried Britain's flag at the Opening Ceremony of the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, the first woman from any country to be given the honour ©Philip Barker



In post war years, the memory of those Games was an embarrassment to local authorities and the cauldron was pressed into service as a cattle trough. It has since disappeared.

There was a sensitive problem for Ceremony organisers at the 1952 Winter Games in Oslo. King George VI died a few days before .

"The musical programme for the opening was changed to a more solemn tone," said the official report.

King Haakon of Norway had been due to make the opening declaration but he flew to London for the funeral with Crown Prince Olav and Princess Ragnhild was asked to perform the ceremonial Olympic duties.

After the march past of the teams, there was a short speech and then the flags were dipped as a minute's silence was observed.

Karl Ritter von Halt, president of the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Olympic organising committee, speaks during the opening of the 1936 Winter Games, which was marred by anti-Jewish sentiment ©AFP/Getty Images





The Olympic Flame had been lit in the Norwegian village of Morgedal and brought by relay, the first time this happened at the Winter Games.

Walt Disney was given the job of designing the ceremonies for the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley, but even he could do nothing about the weather on the morning of the opening ceremony. A Sierra Nevada snowstorm threatened to ruin the spectacle but as the Greek team marched in, the sun appeared. Many at the time called this "The Miracle of Squaw Valley".

A colourful "Tower of Nations" depicting each participating country stood at the centre of the stadium and balloons were released as the flame was lit.

The opening words were spoken by American vice president Richard Nixon.

The sunshine appeared just in the nick of time at the Squaw Valley 1960 Opening Ceremony, designed by Walt Disney © AFP/Getty Images



When the Winter Games returned to the United States in 1980, it was again the Vice-President who opened them, but the reason seemed to be political. At the time of the Lake Placid Games, President Jimmy Carter was campaigning for a boycott of the Moscow Games in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was hostile to the IOC.

"At the last moment I was informed that he had delegated his authority to vice president Walter Mondale," Wrote IOC President Lord Killanin later.

Lake Placid was the third and to date last city to stage the Olympic Winter Games twice. Innsbruck held her second opening ceremony in 1976 at  the Bergisel ski jump stadium where two cauldrons burned to mark the fact. Twelve years earlier in 1964, the Winter flame had been brought from Olympia in Greece for the first time. The ceremony  was subdued after two fatal accidents in training. Almost half a century later, another tragedy hit the Winter Games and a visibly shaken Jacques Rogge opened his speech at the Vancouver Games with a tribute to Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed during a training run.

Grey skies greeted the Olympic flame as it arrived in Sarajevo for the 1984 Games but the colour purple provided the dominant theme for dancers. They wore legwarmers and headbands as they performed. The television series Fame was popular at the time. A specially written March of all The Continents greeted the competitors. The ceremonies at the Kosevo stadium were modest but well received and Yugoslav President of the Presidencies Mika Spiljak made the opening declaration. These were the first Games at which IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch presided and he clearly retained an affection for what he called "Dear Sarajevo".

Sarajevo’s Opening Ceremony in 1984 was modest, but well received ©AFP/Getty Images



In 1988, a massed choir sang the official song Come Together in Calgary as first nation tribes on horseback made a dramatic entry. The use of horses on such a scale was also seen twelve years later at the summer Games in Sydney. When Australia arrived in Calgary, the band played "Happy Birthday" in honour of the Aussies' bicentenary that year.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police provided an escort for the Governor General Jeanne Sauve, representative of the Queen who arrived in an open landau to open the Games. She made the announcement in French and English, as the Queen had done at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.

The Canadian snowbirds flew overhead as the flame was lit by 12-year-old Robyn Perry.

Albertville was the central resort of the 1992 Games. The Opening Ceremony was arguably the most bizarre of them all. Described by the American magazine Sports Illustrated as "Mind Warping" it began shortly before sunset. The organisers promised the Ceremony would "rupture the quiet tradition of the previous editions". An aerial ballet offered an original depiction of the Olympic sports, but what was harder to fathom was the decision that the narrators would speak in bizarre rhyming couplets.

The placards were carried by girls who wore giant costumes that resembled desk ornaments shaken to produce the effect of a snowstorm. Football superstar Michel Platini  brought the Flame to the stadium and joined youngster Francois Cyrille Grange to light the cauldron, but some were left with the feeling that it had "ruptured tradition" too much.

The most memorable moment of the Lillehammer 1994 Opening Ceremony came when a ski jumper heralded the arrival of the flame ©Getty Images



In 1994, the Norwegians reverted to a more classical theme and created a magical winter setting in Lillehammer to welcome the Games.