Here's What Was Supposed To Happened With The Botched Olympic Rings At The Opening Ceremony
It produced this image of four fully-expanded rings with one sad snowflake off to the right:
Owen Gibson of the Guardian is covering the games in Sochi. He was given a "cheat sheet" that explains what is supposed to happen during each part of the Opening Ceremony.
Here's what it said about the rings:
"As the voices and music swell, the snowflakes iris out and transform into the five Olympic Rings. The snowflakes then transform the five Olympic rings, shining, twinkling and sparkling with small fireworks until a great and final climactic burst."
The rings never made it to the "shining, twinkling, and sparkling with small fireworks" stage.
The rings in the cheat sheet (presumably taken from a rehearsal) are much more fiery than how they ended up: