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American Morning

Showtime in Salt Lake City

Aired February 08, 2002 - 11:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: It's showtime in Salt Lake City: 17 days, 2,500 athletes, 16,000 security officers. The opening ceremony tonight promises to be sentimental and patriotic, within the bounds of Olympic protocol. Those boundaries have been established.

Rusty Dornin watching it all live this morning from Salt Lake.

It's going to be a great night tonight, Rusty. Let's keep it safe, huh.

Good morning.

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

And the details of that opening ceremony are supposed to be top secret. Those who watched the rehearsal were sort of sworn to secrecy. But we did get someone to show us a few details. It's supposed to be a southwestern theme, featuring a lot of Indian mysticism, kind of a combination between "The Lion King" and "Circe De Sole." Apparently, there will be a lot of live animals involved. It will be entirely on ice. They had to actually spend a couple of months training these animals to walk on the ice. Horses had special shoes made in order for them not to slip, and the opening ceremony expected to last about three hours.

Sting and Yo-Yo Ma apparently are going to be together, featured together, during the show. Now of course, security will be unprecedented, especially tonight, because President Bush will be attending, along with U.N. chief Kofi Annan and some other world leaders. Now President Bush will arrive sometime this afternoon. And they're now saying 16,000 security personnel. It's jumped to sort of -- in the last week, we heard 10, we've heard 12 -- now we're hearing 16.

But at any rate, it is going to be tight. Now a lot of people are sort of comparing this must be like a war zone, the feeling of the National Guard and the military with their M-16s. But apparently, there will be a lot of undercover. They're trying to make it as unobtrusive as possible. They're riding that fine line between sort of a siege mentality and making people feel welcome at the games. But the security has been very tight for weeks, in downtown Salt Lake, in the area where we are, and some of the other Olympic venues. They've been checking vehicles for two weeks. All the delivery vans that come in, everything that comes into this area is checked, every single day. They've got the security checkpoints up 24 hours a day.

So it remains to be seen whether visitors are going to feel like they are in the middle of security sort of war zone or not. Hopefully not -- Bill.

HEMMER: Rusty, quickly here, just back to that whole issue there. Some people say the biggest hurdle could be the traffic getting in and around. Have they talked to you about a possible diversion in plans to make sure that runs smoothly. I know that in Atlanta, 96, there is a lot of bus traffic. Don't know if the same is going to happen in Salt Lake.

DORNIN: I don't -- visitors are completely discouraged. You can't park anywhere, or bring your vehicles close to anywhere near venues, and so you have to take shuttles, and actually the downtown traffic has been pretty good so far, it's been pretty quiet. But I think the main problem, Bill, may be for visitors just getting into the venues. It's going to remain to be seen how long it is going to take them, either to check through the metal detectors and do any searches that they may have to do. So hopefully in the cold, people won't be standing around in line for hours.

HEMMER: That's when those hand and feet warmers come in handy, too.

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