Space Station (ISS). The spacecraft itself was adorned with Olympic-themed livery including the Games' emblem. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky waved the torch on a spacewalk outside the ISS. The torch returned to Earth five days later on board Soyuz TMA-09M. The torch also reached Europe's highest mountain, Mount Elbrus, and Siberia's Lake Baikal. Opening ceremony The opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics was held on 7 February 2014 at Fisht Olympic Stadium, an indoor arena built specifically for the ceremonies. The ceremony featured scenes based around aspects of Russian history and arts, including ballet, classical music, the Russian Revolution, and the age of the Soviet Union. The opening scene of the ceremony featured a notable technical error, where one of five snowflakes, which were to expand to form the Olympic rings, malfunctioned and did not expand (a mishap mocked by the organizers at the closing ceremony where one of the roundrelay dance groups symbolizing the Olympic rings "failed" to expand). The torch was taken into the stadium by Maria Sharapova, who then passed it to Yelena Isinbayeva who, in turn, passed it to wrestler Aleksandr Karelin. Karelin then passed the torch to gymnast Alina Kabaeva. Figure skater Irina Rodnina took the torch and was met by former ice hockey goalkeeper Vladislav Tretiak, who exited the stadium to jointly light the Olympic cauldron located near the center of Olympic Park. Participating National Olympic Committees A record 88 nations qualified to compete, which beat the previous record of 82 set at the previous Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The number of athletes who qualified per country is listed in the table below (number of athletes shown in parentheses). Seven nations made their Winter Olympics debut: Dominica, Malta, Paraguay, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, and Zimbabwe. The Winter debut of Malta meant that for the first time ever, all of the current members of the European Olympic Committees participated at the Winter Olympics. Kristina Krone qualified to compete in her second consecutive games for Puerto Rico, but the island's Olympic Committee once again chose not to send her to compete. Similarly, South Africa decided not to send alpine skier Sive Speelman to Sochi. Algeria also did not enter its only qualified athlete, Mehdi-Selim Khelifi. India's athletes originally competed as Independent Olympic Participants and marched under the Olympic flag during the opening ceremony, as India was originally suspended in December 2012 over the