Scooped

Sting to headline Olympic opening ceremony

Emmy winning producer Don Mischer announces the talent list for the opening ceremony. AP

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Sting will share the same stage with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the opening ceremony of the Salt Lake City Olympics.

The Feb. 8 event also will feature the Dixie Chicks, country singer LeAnn Rimes, former member of "The Band" Robbie Robertson, and Rita Coolidge.

Other performers will be cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the six-man a cappella group Eclipse and Utah's Deseret String Band, which played cowboy tunes at the 1998 Nagano Games.

Some of the artists already have held rehearsals with the 320-member Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah Symphony.

Sting's role was disclosed Sunday as he won the Golden Globe movie song category for a romantic waltz in the comedy Kate & Leopold.

"They surprised us," said Mitt Romney, president of the Salt Lake Organising Committee (SLOC), referring to the Sunday night award show. "We had planned to make a separate announcement but they beat us to it."

The southern Ute Indian Tribe, however, will not participate in the opening ceremonies alongside five other tribes pulling out over safety concerns following the Sept. 11 attacks.

"There were news releases saying that the Olympic opening ceremonies were a prime target for terrorist activity," tribal spokeswoman Edna Frost told the Salt Lake Tribune. "We didn't want to put any of them [tribal members] in any kind of jeopardy."

After selling 44,000 tickets to the opening ceremony, Olympic organizers have only 450 tickets left. Organizers intend to shut down their eBay Internet auction of prime tickets on Thursday.

Salt Lake organizers were the first to sell their own Olympic tickets this way, and they raised more than US$1 million selling 1,000 pairs of tickets on eBay.

Now only 48 pairs of tickets remain on eBay's auction, including those for prime events such as men's gold medal hockey; the U.S. vs. Russia game; men's freestyle aerials and some figure skating.

The highest eBay bid was US$11,100 for a pair of men's figure skating tickets.

 

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Reuters contributed to this report.