* Queen's entrance marked with James Bond film cameo
* Three centuries of Britain unroll in kaleidoscopic pageant
* Tour de France winner rings huge bell to start event
* Incandescent Olympic rings rise into stratosphere
* First Games world records fall in archery
LONDON, July 27 (Reuters) - Britain's Queen Elizabeth
declared the London Olympics open after playing a cameo role in
a dizzying ceremony designed to highlight the grandeur and
eccentricities of the nation that invented modern sport.
Children's voices intertwining from the four corners of her
United Kingdom ushered in an exuberant historical pageant of
meadows, steel mills and megapixels before an audience of 60,000
in the Olympic Stadium and a probable billion television viewers
around the globe.
Many of them gasped at the sight of the 86-year-old queen,
marking her Diamond Jubilee this year, putting aside royal
reserve in a video where she stepped onto a helicopter with
James Bond actor Daniel Craig to be carried aloft from
Buckingham Palace.
A film clip showed doubles of her and Bond skydiving towards
the stadium and, moments later, she made her entrance in person.
"Great Britain was the cradle of modern sport,"
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge told
reporters. "You invented modern sport in the second half of the
19th century."
To underline the point, Bradley Wiggins, crowned five days
earlier as Britain's first winner of the Tour de France and
hoping to add more road cycling gold in London, tolled the
world's largest tuned bell to begin the ceremony.
David Beckham, the English soccer icon who helped to
convince the IOC to grant London the Games, sped down the Thames
in a speedboat bearing the Olympic flame on the penultimate leg
of a torch relay that inspired many ordinary people around
Britain.
And in one moment of simple drama, the stadium fell silent
as five giant, incandescent Olympic rings, symbolically forged
from British steel mills, were lifted slowly out of the stadium
by weather balloons, destined for the stratosphere.
More than 10,000 athletes from 204 countries will compete in
26 sports over 17 days of competition in the only city to have
staged the modern Games three times.
Most of them were there for the traditional alphabetical
parade of the national teams, not least the athletes from Egypt,
Tunisia, Libya and Yemen competing in their first Olympics since
their peoples overthrew autocrats in Arab Spring revolutions.
Brunei and Qatar were led in by their countries' first ever
female Olympians and so, along with Saudi Arabia, ended their
status as the only countries to exclude women from their teams.
ROYAL ROLE
At a reception earlier in the day, the queen spelled out the
role played by her family after the Olympics were revived in
Athens in 1896.
"This will be the third London Olympiad. My great
grandfather opened the 1908 Games at White City. My father
opened the 1948 Games at Wembley Stadium. And, later this
evening, I will take pleasure in declaring open the 2012 London
Olympic Games at Stratford in the east of London," she said.
"Over recent months, many in these islands have watched with
growing excitement the journey of the Olympic torch around the
United Kingdom. As the torch has passed through villages and
towns, it has drawn people together as families and communities.
"To me, this spirit of togetherness is a most important part
of the Olympic ideal. And the British people can be proud of the
part they have played in keeping the spirit alive."
The opening show, costing an estimated 27 million pounds
($42 million), was inspired by William Shakespeare's play "The
Tempest", his late-life meditation on age and mortality.
Children were centre-stage throughout, starting from the
moment when live pictures of junior choirs singing in the
landscapes of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were
beamed into the stadium's giant screens, four traditional songs
woven together into a musical tapestry of Britain.
Oscar-winning film director Danny Boyle began his sweep
through British history by grassing over the arena in a
depiction of the pastoral idyll mythologised by the romantic
poet William Blake as "England's green and pleasant land".
Idyll turned swiftly to inferno as the Industrial
Revolution's "dark Satanic mills" burst from the ground, before
those same mills forged the last of five giant rings that
interlocked and were carried aloft by balloons.
Many sequences turned the entire stadium into a vast video
screen made up of tens of thousands of "pixels" attached to the
seats. One giant message, unveiled by Tim Berners-Lee, British
inventor of the world wide web, read "This is for Everyone".
The performance included surreal and often humorous
references to British achievements, especially in social reform
and the arts, and was due to conclude with a performance by
former Beatle Paul McCartney.
Until the last few days, media coverage had been dominated
by security firm G4S's admission that it could not provide
enough guards for Olympic venues. Thousands of extra soldiers
had to be deployed at the last minute, despite the company's
multi-million-dollar contract from the government.
Counter-terrorism chiefs have played down fears of a major
attack on the Games, and Prime Minister David Cameron said that
a safe and secure Olympics was his priority.
Suicide attacks on London on July 7, 2005, the day after
London was awarded the Games, killed 52 people. This year the
Games will mark the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Munich
massacre, when 11 Israeli Olympic team members were killed by
Palestinian militants.
"This is the biggest security operation in our peacetime
history, bar none," Cameron said, "and we are leaving nothing to
chance."
ARCHERY WORLD RECORD
Although no medals will be awarded until Saturday, the
women's soccer tournament started on Wednesday, and on Friday
South Korean archers set the first world records of the Games.
Im Dong-hyun, who suffers from severe myopia and just aims
at "a blob of yellow colour", broke his own 72-arrow world
record with a score of 699 out of a possible 720, leading his
two colleagues to a record combined score as well.
The Games' first medals will be decided in the women's 10
metres air rifle final on Saturday, with the big action coming
in the men's cycling road race, where world champion Mark
Cavendish is favourite to become Britain's first gold medallist.
In the evening, Americans Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte are
scheduled to line up for a classic confrontation in the men's
400 metres individual medley final.
Phelps, competing in seven events after winning a record
eight gold medals four years ago in Beijing, is bidding to
become the first swimmer to win gold in the same discipline
three times in a row.
"This is going to be a special race," said Gregg Troy, head
coach of the American men's team. "I can't imagine a better way
to promote our sport than a race like this on the first day."