By Philip Barker
The passing of Vangelis prompted many reminders of his Oscar-winning score for Chariots of Fire but his career also featured music associated with other sporting events.
It is 40 years since Vangelis, born Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, won the Academy Award for best musical score and created what Chariots of Fire producer Lord David Puttnam described as “a new landscape” for cinematic scores.
Vangelis composed a theme for Harold Abrahams, the 100 metres champion played by Ben Cross and “Eric’s Theme” for Eric Liddell, a Scottish runner and missionary portrayed in the film by Ian Charleson.
There was also an arrangement of the famous hymn “Jerusalem.”
The signature theme “Chariots of Fire” remains synonymous with the Olympics and athletics, but Vangelis once recalled that director Hugh Hudson had originally decided to use another of his tracks for the famous opening sequence where the athletes run across the beach at St Andrews.
The original choice was a not dissimilar track called “L’Enfant” which eventually features in “The Year of Living Dangerously,” a film starring Mel Gibson which was released the following year.
“I was not very happy because I wanted to do something better for the beginning, and then at the last minute I succeeded to convince Hugh and David to play the ‘Chariots of Fire’ that we know,” Vangelis recalled.
That piece of music was adopted by BBC Television who used it as the opening theme for their coverage of the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.
It was also included in the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony as the soundtrack to a humorous pastiche by comedian Rowan Atkinson.
Ceremony producers said it was “to honour Britain’s cinematic tradition and the film most associated with the Olympic Games.”
Vangelis had performed a special arrangement at the Opening Ceremony of the 1997 IAAF World Athletics Championships in the historic Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.
It was a Ceremony that he had designed and directed and also featured opera singer Montserrat Caballe.
The show made extensive use of light projection and included his own arrangement of the Greek national anthem.
As Athens prepared to receive the Olympic Flag at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Vangelis was also appointed creator and director of the Handover Ceremony.
He worked with Olympic Flame Lighting choreographer Maria Horss to produce a moving music and light sequence which featured the priestesses from the Flame Lighting Ceremony at Olympia.
High Priestess Thalia Prokopiou had kindled the Sydney Flame some months previously and now joined 21 priestesses to troop the Handover flag from the stadium “signalling the return of the Olympics to their birthplace.”
As they did so, other priestesses tossed olive branches into the flag as the stadium was flooded in blue light while special music adapted from a theme to accompany the emblem of Athens 2004 was heard.
He had also written a memorable theme to accompany the “Race against Time,” a worldwide mass run to raise money and awareness of hunger in 1986. His music accompanied Sudanese runner Omar Khalifa as he lit a cauldron at the United Nations Building in New York, and composed the official theme for the 2002 FIFA World Cup held in Korea and Japan.
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