The Summer Olympics opened in LA. with equal doses of drama and dazzle and very little seemed to go wrong.

President Reagan, who at one point in the festivities said he was
"bursting with pride," delivered the formal opening statement from
inside a glass-enclosed booth at the packed Coliseum. The Times' Peter
H. King called the Olympics "a mammoth undertaking challenged by
financial restrictions imposed by weary taxpayers, by boycotts, by the
threat of terrorism and by all the other calamities that have beclouded
the Olympic future."

"We wish no political statement," said Peter V. Ueberroth, the
Olympics chief and future baseball commissioner. "We wish only to show
hospitality and friendship and through these efforts make a better
world if we can."

–Keith Thursby