Pan Am Opening Ceremonies at Omnilife Stadium

 

The audio is the final minute countdown before the ceremonies began. That's about 45,000 people jammed into the Omnilife Stadium.

The opening ceremonies last night at Omnilife Stadium was totally spectacular. The above audio slideshow I put together doesn't capture the excitement, but you can get a taste. They had me at the choreographed horse routine, but then the sombrero-wearing mariachi singers, folk dancers, fireworks display, aerial performance, and audience-led flashlight number pushed it over the top.

I, along with most of the media, left for the stadium about four hours before the show. Traffic in this city is notoriously bad. The stadium, which really looks like a flying saucer, is located on the outskirts of town near the athlete's village. The bus zipped along the Pan-Am only lanes and we made it in about 30 minutes. Toronto will be using these types of lanes in 2015. Thousands of locals were already at the stadium by the time we arrived.

Getting home after the show was a bit nerve-racking with that many people moving all at once. I managed to sneak onto the first media bus leaving the stadium, thankfully. At that point, the line-up for the public buses already stretched more than a kilometre. The show finished around 10:15 p.m. I bet people were still trying to get back to town at 1 a.m.

Meanwhile, Amanda Sin won Canada's first medal, a bronze, in mountain bike today. 

“I feel really excited to win a medal here at the Pan Am Games,” she said after. “It’s really exciting to win the first medal of the Games, so I’m happy to do that for our country.”