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  • 29
    Jul
    2012
    10:23am, EDT

    Olympic crasher marched with Indian team at opening ceremony

    Mark Humphrey / AP

    An opening ceremony cast member walked with the Indian team during the Opening Ceremony at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Friday.

    By Ian Johnston, NBC News

    A woman managed to gatecrash the Indian Olympic team’s march round the stadium at the Games' opening ceremony, it has emerged.

    The interloper –- said to be one of the thousands of volunteers who took part in the show –- walked alongside flag-carrier and wrestler Sushil Kumar at the head of the team at Friday's event, causing anger among Indian Olympic officials.


    In stark contrast to the athletes, who were dressed in blue and yellow, the interloper was dressed in a red jacket and light-blue pants.

    She also sported a broad smile in some of the photographs.

    Sebastian Coe, chairman of Games organizers LOCOG, told the daily press conference Sunday that he could confirm “that she was a cast member [of the opening ceremony show], who clearly got slightly over-excited.”

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    “I think there’s a very important point here to take into consideration – and I don’t minimize the fact she got into the Opening Ceremony –  she could not have got in the opening ceremony without having gone through all our security protocols anyway,” Coe said.

    “Don’t run away with the idea she had walked in off the street to do that,” he added.

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    He said he would be speaking to Indian officials about what happened.

    The Deccan Chronicle newspaper identified the woman as a graduate student from Bangalore, India.

    Read more on the Olympics from NBC News

    Indian Olympic official P.K. Muralidharan Raja was quoted by the paper as saying they had been "initially told that she would accompany the contingent ’til the track, but she went on to take the entire lap. There was another man also, but he stayed back and did not enter the stadium.”

    Harpal Singh Bedi, Indian Olympic team press attache, told a press conference that the gatecrasher "not only walked, she led our contingent. It looked like she was the leader," according to an AP Television report.

    "... if this had happened in India, people would say 'you don't know how to run the Games, security problems,' ... I think this was definitely a security lapse," he added.

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    92 comments

    She was their guide, making sure the team went to the correct place, as well as being a cast member so NO security breach. She got carried away and kept walking when she should have stopped. To be honest at least she was smiling and waving the rest of the Indian's looked as if they had something stu …

    Show more
    Explore related topics: olympics, games, team, indian, march, u-k, opening-ceremony, london-2012, featured, gatecrasher

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