A CLASS ACT; TRADITION, PAGEANTRY PERVADE NAGANO IN OPENING CEREMONY.

Byline: Diane Pucin Philadelphia Inquirer 

The gong of the Zenkoji Temple sounded and men dressed as warriors climbed 39-foot wooden pillars that hold the spirit of the local gods who are charged with protecting these Olympics. Sumo wrestlers, some weighing more than 500 pounds, growled and stomped their massive legs to purify these stadium grounds. A glorious chorus of voices and symphonies played together a sound of joy, ``The Ode to Joy.''

And so these 18th Winter Olympics began today at Minami Nagano Sports Park and it seemed for two hours as if the world had been transported back to the Middle Ages.

It was no secret. The Nagano Olympic Organizing Committee said what it wanted - to unite the world's continents through ``a simple, dignified and spiritual performance.''

If the Japanese are too polite to say that they want to do things differently than the Americans at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, they were not too polite to say that the aim of these Olympics is a ``respect for the beauty and bounty of nature, the furtherance of peace and goodwill.''

In Atlanta there were monster trucks, here there were monster sumo wrestlers.

In Atlanta to light the torch there was Muhammed Ali, the transcendent sporting star of our era who never hesitated to tell the world he was the greatest; here to light the torch there was Midori Ito, a tiny, fragile figure skater who once apologized to her country for failing to win a gold medal.

It was the difference between the Atlanta Summer Olympics, big and boisterous and sometimes lacking decorum but always spilling over with emotion, and what the Japanese hope is a polite, tasteful and endearing Olympics. It was the difference between abstract finger painting and coloring strictly between the lines.

Some 2,450 athletes from 72 countries marched into the new stadium that was built to appear as a giant cherry blossom from above and that the citizens of Nagano hope will help them attract a professional baseball team. So some things are the same between Atlanta and Nagano. The focal stadium becomes a baseball park.

For the first time ever there were winter Olympic athletes from Uruguay, Macedonia, Kenya, Venezuela and Azerbaijan and each flag bearer was escorted into the sunlight by a sumo wrestler.

Carrying the flag for the United States was 30-year-old short-track speed skater Eric Flaim, a two-time Olympic silver medalist from Pembrooke, Mass., appearing in his fourth Olympics. Flaim had been elected to this honor while he was in an airplane flying here. He had gotten off his flight in Osaka and handed a fax by an airline representative. When Flaim went to stick the unread fax into his pocket, the airline person gently prodded Flaim. Read it, she said, and Flaim did.

``I was stunned,'' he said. ``I never thought about me doing this.''

As he walked at the head of the U.S. delegation, with 440-pound Hawaiian sumo wrestler Musashimaru at his side, Flaim said he was thinking that ``it's always a thrill to be part of the U.S. delegation marching in. The thrill of the crowds and the joy of being there with the other athletes kind of overwhelms you.''

Zenkoji Temple has become the focal point of these Games already, a gathering place for the foreigners who have come to this isolated, insular town and a sacred place for the Japanese who have always stopped at this place that is said to date back more than 1,300 years.

And it was the temple bell, rung at 11:01 a.m. in Japan that was the first official sound of the ceremony. That the sound was amplified over loudspeakers didn't seem to matter. It didn't make the feeling any more ancient.

The Global Chorus performed, singers on five continents standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin; on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in Australia; inside the U.N. General Assembly Hall in New York; in front of the Shenwu Gate of the Forbidden City in Beijing; near Cape Town at False Bay in South Africa. All singing live at every hour of the day and night and broadcast over big screens which suddenly didn't seem obtrusive when it was beautiful voices in song instead of a clattering advertisement for beer or phone service.

The Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko were escorted to their seats in the Royal Box, a tiny man and woman who don't often appear in public but who of course would be on hand for the third Olympics ever in the country and the first since the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo.

Fan favorites were the sumos, especially 6-8, 516-pound Akebono, who had been born Chad Rowan in Hawaii and who is the first foreign-born sumo to become a yokozuna or Grand Champion.

After the largest participants, the smallest marched in, the Yukinko or Snow Children. The youngsters performed a dance to express their wish for love and peace during the approaching century and they also sang a song, the Nagano Games Peace Appeal song.

And that was the theme of the remarks from International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch who officially opened the Games. ``These XVIII Olympic Winter Games are being celebrated in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is therefore our hope that the appeal of the 185 Member States of the United Nations to observe the Olympic Truce will foster international dialogue and diplomatic solutions to all conflicts, in an effort to bring human tragedies to an end. The future of our society truly lies in our youth.''

Unlike Atlanta, it was no big secret who would light the Olympic torch.

Ito, who won an Olympic figure skating silver medal at Albertville in 1992 and who felt so bad that she hadn't won a gold that she apologized to her nation, had played an important role in bringing these Games to her country and so it was left to her the final honor, the lighting of the torch.

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4 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) The United States' contingent enters the stadium during the opening ceremony today in Nagano, Japan.

(2--Color) Brian Stemmle Canada Men's Downhill

(3) Preschool children wave flags Friday in Nagano as part of a welcoming ceremony for athletes and spectators arriving for the Olympics.

(4) At a security checkpoint outside the Minami Nagano Sports Center, Japanese police officers carefully examine spectators.

Associated Press