// block 692273 · sport · 23 July 2021
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games open
The moment this block marks: the start of the opening ceremony, 20:00 in Tokyo, 23 July 2021, 11:00:00 UTC. The first block mined after it is block 692,273, 23 July 2021, 11:07:09 UTC.
The Games of Tokyo 2020 should have opened in the summer of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed them back by a year, a postponement without precedent, and when the opening ceremony began at the National Stadium at 20:00 on 23 July 2021, spectators had been kept out and the stands were almost empty. Outside, protesters against the Games chanted loudly enough to be heard inside.
The show opened with a film on the eight years since Tokyo had won the Games and on the streets of the city, while fireworks rose from the roof of the stadium, then a scene of athletes training alone, as many had during the pandemic. The athletes marched in masks, Greece first, then the Refugee Olympic Team, to an orchestral medley of music from Japanese video games, and 1,824 drones formed a globe above the stadium.
Emperor Naruhito declared the Games open at 23:18, and the tennis player Naomi Osaka lit the cauldron. ABC News reporters in the stadium described the mood as solemn, a little like a dress rehearsal, though the athletes came in good spirits, without the applause of a crowd.
Block 692,273 was mined seven minutes after the start, at 20:07 in Tokyo, as the opening film played and the first fireworks went up from the roof. Its hash, like every hash, can be checked on any node.
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