<P> The traditional part of the ceremonies starts with a "Parade of Nations", during which most participating athletes march into the stadium, country by country . It is not compulsory for athletes to participate in the opening ceremonies . Because some of the first events of the Games may start on the day before, on the day, or the day after the ceremonies, athletes competing in these early events may elect not to participate . </P> <P> For every Opening Ceremony, each host country has a theme . During the "Parade of Nations", the host country's goal is to represent their cultural identity and to show the world their place in society . For example, in the 2008 Beijing Olympics the theme was "unity". On May 12, 2008, a devastating earthquake erupted in Sichuan . As the host country, China wanted to remember this tragic event by having Yao Ming, a Chinese basketball legend, walk hand - in - hand with Lin Hao, a nine - year - old boy who saved some of his classmates during the earthquake . </P> <P> Each country's delegation is led by a sign with the name of their country and by their nation's flag . Traditionally, Greece always enters first and leads the parade because of its historical status as the progenitor of the Olympics, and the host nation enters last . All other participating teams enter after Greece and before the host nation, in order according to a language selected by the organizing committee for those games, which is usually the dominant language in the area of the host city . Announcers announce each country's name in English, French and the dominant language of the area of the host city, if neither English nor French is the dominant language . </P> <P> In the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the Greek flag led the parade, while the Greek team entered last, as the host nation; Saint Lucia (Αγία Λουκία in Greek) then entered first . In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, both Spanish and Catalan were official languages of the games, but due to the political sensitivity surrounding the use of Catalan, the nations entered in French alphabetical order . For unknown reasons, all three games taking place in Japan had the nations enter in English alphabetical order instead of Japanese characters . In the 2008 Summer Olympics, teams were ordered by the number of strokes in the Chinese translation of the team name . In the 2010 Winter Olympics, teams entered in English alphabetical order, although the languages of the Olympics are also the languages of the host country, Canada, because English is the more dominant of the two in Vancouver and in the host province of British Columbia . In the 1980 Summer Olympics and the 2014 Winter Olympics, the countries entered in the Cyrillic alphabetical order, which is the Russian language's official script . </P>

Which contingent leads the march past in all the olympic games