This particular open of the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo 2021 was the brainchild of key members from Velazquez’s team and based on his insistence in telling narrative stories that could inspire and motivate an audience to engage.

Those team members, Adriano Roig and Adrian Costas, who worked on the idea, script and editing, together with SVP of Production, Robert Pardo, pitched Velazquez to consider a new approach to the task at hand through the use of a spoken word performer, embodied on this occasion by Daniel Habif, a world renown speaker from Mexico. They felt his reading and execution would fulfill Velazquez’s storytelling goals.

This opening hit on all Velazquez wanted, an execution that could connect with audiences in a meaningful way, one that not only showcased the disciplines they would see, but also the human condition that they could relate to.